


a cruel kind of careful

by DreamerWisherLiar



Series: the best-laid plans [2]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dysfunctional Relationships, F/M, Mutual Pining, Trust Issues, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-08-07 20:16:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 46,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16415225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamerWisherLiar/pseuds/DreamerWisherLiar
Summary: Sequel to 'words are weapons to a liar'.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so you're all probably going to notice immediately that the timeline is completely different then the show's. I'm pretending this is because the events of the previous story caused it to split off from that timeline and some things to happen earlier/differently, but there's a bit of fudging around the edges anyway. If you're someone bothered by inconsistencies, I'm sorry. I hope you enjoy it anyway!
> 
> I didn't check the archive warning for graphic violence because I don't think the violence in this is graphic enough to count, but just be aware, there is still violence.

The streets of Rouen are alive with people, chatter, gossip, and loud bargaining, and Milady de Winter sighs in pleasure as she lets the sound rush over her. She’s been too long away from society. Well, interesting society, anyway – Gus’s men may be excellent at beating and selling men, but they’re not exactly sparkling conversationalists.

“Be back within the hour,” Sebastian growls at her even as she thinks this, and she gives him a farewell flutter of her fingers as she melts into the crowd. It’s barely this side of mocking, but he won’t notice – he’s quite infatuated with her, despite his often taciturn nature and short way of speaking. 

Two months in the Forest of Evreux have left her with the appearance of some kind of witch of the woods, and she wishes she could spend the brief time she has stealing some elegant trifles and creature comforts to negate that. It’s the first time he’s brought her to Rouen with him instead of leaving her in their latest camp. But it won’t take Sebastian long to negotiate the price for this load of men, or for the items taken off them, and she has other things to attend to.

She considers that she has little in the way of conscience, but even so, she tries not to dwell on the men sold to the Spanish galleons. Slavery leaves a sour taste in her mouth. She reminds herself frequently that her part in this is simply as an evaluator of goods, nothing more, nothing less, but the continuous parade of doomed men still feels like it drags at her more by the day. As soon as she can find something else, she’ll be long gone. With every bagful of trinkets, she hopes against hope for something valuable enough to get her out of the country, or at least valuable enough to keep her afloat until she can find something that doesn’t feel like it’s scraping away whatever remnants of soul she has left. Being in cities for too long is dangerous, though – the Cardinal won’t have forgiven her actions.

She keeps her ears alert for any mention of Richelieu as she winds through the streets. It doesn’t take long to hear his name, but the news shocks her so much she nearly bends over gasping in the street. She grabs the gossiping woman’s arm and receives an offended look. “The Cardinal is dead?” she demands. “He can’t be.”

“Wore out his heart in the service of France.” The woman forgives her rudeness, pleased by the dramatic response to her news. “Shame, isn’t it? They say the Queen’s so distraught she nearly lost the child, and her what, only a month or two from her time?”

She has no hesitation in dismissing that as a complete fabrication to add drama to the story, and a silly one at that. Their King has been without a son long enough, and his brother the heir disliked enough, that no one in this little circle of gossipers looks pleased by the addition.

The Cardinal, dead. It’s hard to imagine. If he wore out his heart through overwork, she wonders with dark humour if she bears some of the responsibility – without her there, he must have had to take a much more hands-on approach to his schemes. Of course, that’s his own fault. The rest might be hers, though – giving him a bullet wound (however superficial), exacerbating his relationship with Treville to the point they must have barely been able to work together, and turning over information to his enemies that presumably forced him to rebuild a large part of his network. Richelieu must have recruited the huge web of agents and informants once before, of course, and her account would only have damaged the setup instead of ruined it totally, but he would have been far younger when he first created it and it’s not exactly an easy task. A lot of the more recent contacts in those lists were her doing, as well – it was her work as much as his that she undid, and she feels a brief pang of regret for all that wasted effort. 

Still, the Cardinal paid her well enough for it at the time, easily a hundred times what Gus is ever likely to give her, and since she’s about to spend every penny she’s received from Gus so far the memory is even more bitter than usual. She regrets leaving her savings in Paris far more than she regrets anything else. Most of the livres were tucked away in her hidden room at the Palais-Cardinal, and are likely to be long gone by now.

“Who’s to be the new First Minister?” she asks.

“None yet. But they say the Captain of the Musketeers is be promoted to the council and take on some of the Cardinal’s duties in the meantime,” the woman says with a sniff of disapproval. She’s well-informed about the business of government, for a street gossip. “Accepted immediately, they say, before the Cardinal’s corpse was even cold. Doubtless he’s hoping to be First Minister once the dust has settled.” Whoever ‘they’ are, they say a lot, according to this woman.

Treville, that’s interesting. The man’s too much of a soldier to ever excel as a politician, but she supposes he’ll do his best. After the previous First Minister got him briefly thrown in the Bastille, he must have jumped at the chance to gain a little more influence and control, fearful of what the next one could do to him and his men. That’s Treville for you: anything for the Musketeers, for the country, and for the King, and always in that order of priority, regardless of how personally unpleasant he must find the work. 

Does this mean she can return to Paris? It’s the best place to earn money, and she does have contacts there. Sarazin is likely dead, and if Constance Bonacieux was rescued, Athos did pledge not to kill her for her crimes. Well, he swore to let her go, but not killing her was certainly implied in the promise. But… no. At the very least, they’d try and force her out of the city, or arrest her for whatever crimes she’ll need to commit to earn a living. This does mean she can take her chances in cities more often, though, and perhaps speak to a few of the Cardinal’s old contacts and seek employment from them.

Probably best to stick with Gus’s men for the moment, then take a horse and flee one night after a particularly good haul. Even if it only keeps her afloat for a few weeks, she can build on that. That is, after all, what she’s good at. For now, she puts it out of her mind – she has other issues to attend to.

There: specific sets of herbs drying in a window, unmistakeably what she’s looking for. She knocks on the door and it’s answered by a sharp-eyed, grey-haired old lady who looks her up and down and then lets her in right away.

“I’ve been feeling slightly ill lately,” Milady says calmly, although there’s no real need for code here. The woman knows exactly why she’s here. It’s the truth, though, she does feel ill – some of her moodiness and nausea could be ascribed to her current living situation, but not all of it, and the diet the gang survives on certainly isn’t the cause of her slight weight gain. It’s lucky she noticed the problem so soon, since her cycles are erratic at the best of times, and can stop for months sometimes when she’s lacking proper food. It’s even luckier Sebastian was willing to bring her to Rouen with him and let her go off on her own. She can nip this in the bud and get rid of her nausea before he even notices she’s ill. Her rue tea and the other little preventative measures she takes have clearly failed her, but then, they’ve never been a guarantee as much as an aid.

Of course, however sick she feels right now, she knows from experience that once she takes the cure she’ll feel considerably worse for some time.

“I have a tea or two that might help.” The woman gives a shrug. “But some people react poorly to them, so it’s best I check your overall health first.”

Oh, good, a back-alley midwife with professional integrity – most of them are willing enough to just shove a few bags of pennyroyal at their customers and send them on their way, and Milady briefly wishes she’d just gotten one of them. Still, the teas can cause death if overindulged in or taken by a particularly sickly or weak woman, so caution’s reasonable – midwives who deal in abortifacients are seen as little more than witches by the more judgmental members of society, and leaving a trail of bodies behind is likely to get them burnt as one. Milady submits to undignified probing and prodding by surprisingly gentle fingers, and a series of sharp and efficient questions. At the midwife’s urging, she removes her stiff brown corset for an uncomfortable feel of her stomach, suppressing her annoyance at this rigmarole.

The second the midwife stops touching her, before even tying her corset, Milady fumbles in her skirts to retrieve the money she has. “Two doses, just in case,” she says decisively, laying the coins down with a clink. Pennyroyal’s expensive, and it might lay her out for a few days or even a week, but she has no doubt it’s worth it – Sebastian isn’t exactly the fatherly type. Of course, she’s not exactly motherly either, so who is she to judge?

“I can’t,” the midwife says, still squinting at her thoughtfully.

“Please,” Milady scoffs. “This is more than enough.” If she has to, she decides she can go as high as offering three quarters of the amount for one dose of pennyroyal, but if the woman tries to bargain for any more she’ll simply go and find another midwife.

“It’s not the money, it’s the timing.”

“What, pennyroyal’s out of season? Is France experiencing a shortage? Just give me the bloody leaves.”

“I meant _your_ timing. You’re too far along. It will take a much greater dose to do it, and even if it works, you’re likely to bleed out your insides along with the child.” The crone looks unsympathetic, and any attempt to speak delicately about this transaction has ended.

“Don’t be absurd. I’m two months at the most.” Before joining Gus’s crew she was getting by mostly on her thieving abilities, and what few seductions she undertook were not of the variety that could cause a pregnancy. Milady wonders if this woman is simply very bad at her job. She’s taken doses of pennyroyal weeks later than this before, and been completely fine.

“Well over double that, I’m afraid.”

She opens her mouth to say incredulously that that’s not possible, then stops as she realises it is. _Athos_. She hadn’t been careful with him, because when was she ever careful with him, in any way? But they’d been married for a year back when she was younger and presumably more fertile than now, and nothing had come of it, so the odds of one time resulting in a child weren’t high. Of course, she’d been frantically busy in the months after their brief encounter, on the run without a coin to her name, so she hadn’t kept track of her time or kept an eye out for any symptoms. It had never so much as crossed her mind. So it wasn’t impossible, not _entirely_ impossible.

She finds her hand wrapping around the locket, the locket she wears nearly all the time, even while sleeping. It doesn’t go with her dress – with any of her dresses, in fact – and the chain is far too long for her, but she cannot seem to take it off.

Still…. “You’re mad. I’m not even showing.”

“Women show at different times, and the first babe often shows late – this is your first, isn’t it? I’ve seen women before whose belly barely curved until right at the end. It’ll grow as big as it needs to, though, so I wouldn’t worry.”

“You wouldn’t _worry_?” she says, voice rising as something close to panic washes through her. As if she’d _worry_ at all about the health of this little invader taking over her body and threatening to take over her life. She should demand the pennyroyal anyway, damn the woman for trying to stop her. If her coin won’t still the woman’s qualms, her knife certainly will.

Except that she doesn’t want to bleed out, not in an alleyway in Rouen with no one to help her, or in a forest camp surrounded by slavers. She’s risked death before, of course she has, but that’s death by gun or knife or sword, and that’s a very different beast, one she can fight. Of course, she’s not a fan of the prospect of death by childbirth, either, but she’s experienced how painful and disgusting taking pennyroyal can be even when it works exactly as planned – taking a lethal dose and haemorrhaging to death is presumably much more unpleasant. Something about this woman’s flint-eyed gaze convinces her she wouldn’t utter warnings without good reason for them.

And… it’s Athos’s child. That shouldn’t matter, of course, if anything it should be even more incentive to remove this parasite from her, but… it’s Athos’s child. What if it has his eyes, his smile, his laugh? Once upon a time she prayed for his child, partly to prove herself as a worthy Comtesse de la Fere, but partly just for the joy of imagining a small incarnation of their love running about the house. Those dreams are long dead, or at least they should be, but that doesn’t rob them of all appeal.

What if she had it and gave it away? The thought occurs just to be dismissed. Oh, it would be ideal if it were possible, but it costs money to persuade someone to take care of a child not their own. She doesn’t have any right now, and even if she did, that doesn’t ensure they’ll take care of it well. Loving couples who lack only a much-beloved child to raise are rare on the ground in France these days. The priests say aborting is an unholy rejection of God’s gift, and an attitude like that leads to a lot of unwanted children. People leave infants out at the crossroads, women sell their daughters to brothels or their sons to the galleys for barely a coin, families are large and food is scarce. No one would have much love to spare for a scrap of humanity abandoned by a woman with no name or position. She’s surprised by the surge of anger that goes through her at the thought of someone mistreating this _thing_ inside her, this thing which is part her and part Athos, this thing which is made up of the only two people in the world she’s ever given a damn about.

My God. She’s going to have to keep it. Worse, a part of her _wants_ to keep it, which is madness at it’s finest.

Panicked thoughts rush through her head at a speed that leaves her dizzy. She can’t return with Sebastian, not when she could start showing soon – he’s liable to notice and react poorly to the situation. But she can’t stay in Rouen, either. She needs money, _serious_ money, enough money to get her through the rest of the pregnancy and after, at least until the child is old enough to be handed over to a nurse, a nurse who’ll also be expensive no doubt. Maybe money to get her even further than that. That means her contacts through the Cardinal. That means information, or, more likely, assassination. That means serious risk, but serious reward if she can survive it. 

She takes several deep breaths, mentally apologising to the creature growing inside her for what she must do – it’s chosen a poor home, a dangerous one even, but she’ll do her best to see they both make it to the birth and have enough coin stored away to keep surviving during and after.

For now… “Well then,” she says to the midwife, voice barely wavering. “Why don’t you tell me what I can expect, and what I must do.”

X_X_X_X_X

The bustle around the ship as people board is more than enough to hide a lone woman in a dark cloak. She lets herself join the crowd, slides to the side of it, ducks around people – the ability to wind your way through crowds and yet remain unseen in them is a kind of magic, and it’s one she’s quite proficient at. And there’s her target, all in black, high ruff, heavy gold chain, unmistakably Spanish. He’s paranoid, that’s clear to see, but he’s looking for armed and armoured men, not a pretty woman who bumps against him and then withdraws with an apology.

She stays just long enough to ensure he’s dead, and then heads back into the streets. She’s always liked port cities, the smell of salt and the sea, but today she’s not in the mood to like anything. Sure, she’s not working for slavers anymore, and that’s something – but the life of a hired assassin is not what she wants. She would have left it already, if she could have. It’s not what her child should have to grow up to, either. Well, once it’s born and her body recovers perhaps she can find a merchant husband somewhere – to a lot of older men, a child from a previous marriage would be irrelevant, and to some it could even be seen as attractive, proof of her fertility and ability to give them an heir. All she has to do is keep going long enough to find something more permanent.

She fancies she has to wear her corsets looser, now, but in truth there’s not much in it. She’s still waiting for her body to change noticeably. She’s also still waiting for some great surge of maternal love, sweetness, kindness and joy to sweep her away, and she suspects she’ll be waiting a while – right now she feels annoyed at the creature more than anything. There’s a sort of selfish protectiveness – my blood, my child, _mine_ – a feeling she could savagely rend with teeth and claws anything that dared to try take it from her, but she doubts that’s what women are meant to experience when they’re expecting. She’s more a she-wolf than she is the Madonna, but then perhaps that just means no one will dare crucify any child of hers. A blasphemous thought, but it amuses her.

She’s terrified, but she won’t admit that, not even in the privacy of her own head. Furious, too: at Athos, at her own stupidity, at this alien creature inside her. Her experiences in life haven’t equipped her to deal with this.

Her contact is waiting at the place he promised, and she briefly considers whether to surprise and drug him instead of simply approaching. If the money really is on him, that way she could get it without risking herself as much. But this unknown hirer has so far played straight with her, even giving her a portion of her payment ahead of completion of the task, so she supposes she should stick to the arrangement as well instead of giving in to paranoia.

“It’s done?” The man says. He’s a Red Guard, she realises, just one out of uniform and attempting subtlety – it causes a shock, but only a brief one. It was the Cardinal’s old contacts she put her name out to when she realised she needed well-paying work, and quickly, and it makes sense that someone with access to that network would have access to the Red Guard as well.

“Yes.” She accepts the purse he hands over, weighs it. A frown crinkles her face. This is more than what she was owed, unless for some reason he’s paid her in small change – but when she opens it, there’s nothing but livres gleaming up at her, far more than was promised. It could help give her months of nice living, a lodging with multiple rooms, even a maid or nurse to help out with the babe.

She wants to earn as much as she can, stockpile livres as if her life depends on it. By the time it starts retaining memories, the ideal scenario is for her child to know her only as a woman with a decent reputation and place in the world. Legitimacy is one of her most consistent frauds, and she’s planning to extend that charade to her child as well. Perhaps she’ll be wife to a well-off but elderly man, or perhaps a widow who makes her way through the world on the funds her late husband left, but in any case her child will hopefully never know the assassin, thief or whore. If she can’t earn enough livres for that and she has to leave it with a nurse and return to her work then she will, but she’ll keep it as secret as she can, keep her world away from the child, whatever it takes. Until its birth, though, she’ll scrape up every penny she can to fund the planned fiction, in whatever way she can, however dubious, and not regret a single action. This is an unexpected gift.

She blinks up at the guard, suspicious, because unexpected gifts carry unexpected costs. “What’s with the bonus?”

“I was instructed to give you this as well,” the man says conscientiously, passing over a note.

She nods, takes it, and withdraws. She’s half a mile away before she settles to read it, and she opens it with gloved hands, pointing away from her, because she’s not the only person who can use poison. After it proves to be safe, she reads it, and then rereads it, and then becomes lost in thought, fingers toying with the chain of her locket.

She’s never respected any restrictions in her pursuit of survival, least of all morality, and she’s capable of being even more ruthless in her plan to give this child everything she never got. But this isn’t a question of ruthlessness, but of risk. She’s heard of the Comte de Rochefort, and not just the recent tales of his miraculous survival and escape. In some ways he was her predecessor, although their time serving the Cardinal did overlap a little, and the work he did on the Cardinal’s behalf was quite different than hers. It should be no surprise the man picked up the reins of what remained of her old network after Richelieu’s death – she’d heard rumours of him being given command of the Red Guards after crawling out of a Spanish prison, and from that position it wouldn’t be difficult to get to Richelieu’s accounts or any other information. 

This gives her pause, though. It’s one thing for him to pay her anonymously to kill the Spanish ambassador. He has reason enough for a grudge against the Spanish, now that she considers it. It’s quite another for him to offer her ongoing work, for the next few months at least, at an equally high rate of pay. Her greedy side is already slavering at the thought of that many livres, but her cautious side holds her back – why would he need that many people assassinated? He’s leading the Red Guard, but he’s not a councillor, not a politician. Unless Treville has now taken over Richelieu’s position in more than one way and is persecuting the Red Guard as the Cardinal once persecuted the Musketeers, there’s no reason he should be more involved with the game of politics than any guard captain.

Richelieu called him a lunatic, once, when he spoke of him. She has a shrewd suspicion the Cardinal would not use that word lightly.

What does she know about him, besides that? He was Richelieu’s agent, he was captured by the Spanish, the Cardinal did not pay his ransom, but he escaped them anyway. The escape happened just after the Cardinal’s death – immediately after, in fact, and she notes that coincidence down as an interesting one, although how the two could be related she has no idea.

So basically what she knows about him boils down to him being a madman with a grudge against the Spanish and a possible grudge against the Cardinal.

And he wants her to come back to Paris to work for him.

It is a terrible idea, for many reasons, Athos chief among them. But she can avoid him and his friends – she managed for half a decade, after all. It shouldn’t even be a factor in her decision.

With a slow sigh, she realises she’ll accept this offer, however bad a decision it might be. Rochefort may be dangerous, but he clearly pays well, she badly needs the money, and this time she’ll make sure she gets out before things go bad. No one can know she’s pregnant, it’s too much of a risk, but she’s not showing yet, and with carefully chosen corsets and shrouding cloaks (perhaps matched to the colour of her dress for additional camouflaging), she can probably avoid anyone realising for long enough to stockpile quite a bit of coin if he continues to be so foolishly generous.

This will get her everything she wants – well, nearly.

X_X_X_X_X

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Milady de Winter.” He has the drawl of lazy aristocracy, reminding her of nobody so much as Thomas d’Athos. Or perhaps that’s not his voice, but his eyes – when she looks in them, she almost thinks she can see little demons inside of each staring back. There are men who make her automatically reach for her knives, and he is one: it’s not an auspicious sign.

For that reason alone, it’s not a pleasure to meet him, but she gives him a crooked smile anyway. “And I you, my lord. Your reputation precedes you.”

“Just as your lack of a reputation precedes you,” he says. His smile is one of acquisition, his gaze cold and calculating as he surveys her. “I considered quite a few others for this job, you know, but with you so close, and the Cardinal’s seal of approval attached – well. I only hope the time you’ve spent in Paris in the past proves an advantage, instead of a hindrance.”

“I assure you, most of my prior acquaintances no longer live in the city.”

“Or live at all, I make no doubt. But my ways are not the Cardinal’s, and my aims are not the same.”

“All men’s aims are the same,” she says lightly, although she’s already beginning to wonder if she’s erred. “Power and control, my lord. The only difference is what they want it over.”

“Hah. I begin to see what interested Richelieu enough to pluck you out of the gutter,” he sneers. “In any case, if you’re wise, you’ll realise quickly enough that I’m not an ordinary man.”

“I always strive for wisdom, my lord.” She doesn’t bother to aim for a seductive tone. He’s not a man to be swayed by romance, she senses that instinctively, even if the fire of obsession fairly burns in his eyes. If he wants her (and she prays to God he doesn’t), he’ll take her, but nothing done in the bedroom will buy either influence or mercy with this man. That was true of the Cardinal as well, but in his case it was a sign of natural shrewdness and a tendency towards dispassion, which she doubts is the case here.

“I suggest you strive for it on your own time. All I ask from you is obedience and efficiency, nothing more and nothing less.”

“Not loyalty?”

Another one of those slightly nasal titters of laughter. “I’m not fool enough to beg snakes not to bite. You’ll be loyal to the coin I provide, and if you’re not, I’ll see that your body is never found. Consider that your motivation to refrain from betraying me.” To her surprise, he takes her chin in his hand, using the grip to force her closer to him, until her face is only inches from him. “No one disappoints me twice, Milady de Winter.”

“I don’t even plan to do it once.” She doesn’t let her expression change, and she thinks that bothers him – apparently, he’s the kind who depends on fear to feel powerful. 

He tightens his fingers on her face to the point of real pain, and she can see a flash of enjoyment in his gaze as she’s unable to suppress a wince, but finally he releases her. He pulls out a handkerchief and wipes his hand with it ostentatiously, as if he’s been in contact with a leper. Arrogant, unpredictable, cruel, and overfond of threats: he is not creating a favourable impression.

So this is her new employer. And she thought Gus was a step down.

“Do you have a task I can assist you with, my lord comte?” she asks, still cool, but now desiring nothing more than to put an end to this meeting.

“Your first target is the Duc de Barville, a member of the King’s council,” he says, letting his voice drop to barely more than a whisper. “You’ll get as much as you did for Perales, but I expect it to resemble a natural death or even just a disappearance. You have one week.”

A member of the King’s council – the council that currently, as far as she knows, has no openings. Treville took Richelieu’s spot, and Rochefort must want one as well. Well, that’s easy enough to achieve. She runs through the list of what she knows about the Duc de Barville, and it’s more than enough for her to subtly engineer his death. He doesn’t drink much, but he does like women, and he’s relatively old and unhealthy, so his heart giving out unexpectedly will excite no suspicion. An overdose of sleeping drugs and perhaps a pillow will suffice.

The man was one of the Cardinal’s more oblivious toadies, from what she recalls, always more than happy to follow any request. In fact, wasn’t he the one Richelieu ordered to make sure Rochefort’s ransom was never paid? She wonders if Rochefort knows that, if it’s why the Duc’s her first target. His motives don’t matter, she reminds herself, so long as his coin remains good – but there’s no harm in learning as much as she can, just in case. Rochefort would be a good man to have a hold over, but not a good man to make an enemy of, so she’ll walk the line as cautiously as she can.

She wonders why she feels nauseous, if it’s the babe in her or more than that. She worked so hard for years not to be bothered by this, by any of this, but when she looks into Rochefort’s face and thinks of killing a man at his bidding it leaves her cold and sick. She’s no longer suited for this life, now she doesn’t have rage to drive her, now she can remember without bitterness what it was like to have more than this, _feel_ more than this.

It’s a couple of months, only a couple, and then she will leave this life behind for good, she reminds herself. Her child – part her, part Athos, all wonder – will have all the opportunities money and decent (if fraudulent) birth can offer.

X_X_X_X_X

A fool returns to their folly, and so she cannot stop herself from seeking him out. The Garrison is the last place she should be, even hidden in the dark alleys nearby at the dead of night, but she needs to see him.

It’s a brief sighting. He has a bottle in hand, Porthos’s arm around him as support, Aramis gesticulating beside them as he tells some wild story. D’Artagnan brings up the rear, smiling good-naturedly at the story. They head to the Captain’s quarters, because Athos is Captain now, apparently. Her hand is wrapped so tightly around the locket that her palm might bruise from the force of it.

The few seconds of gazing at him before they’re up the stairs and away tell her nothing useful, but she drinks him in greedily anyway. His hair is a mess, and she would like to straighten it by running her fingers through it; his brow is wrinkled and creased with stress, and she could press her palm to it until he relaxes; he has dark shadows under his eyes, but she could persuade him to stay abed. It’s all wild fantasies, of course, and she’ll do no such thing – she has no idea what he feels about her now. Constance Bonacieux is alive, she knows that, but it’s not like her abduction was the only reason he had to hate her.

When she left, she left him with a scattering of little kindnesses, and one that was anything but little. She laid out five years of crime and cruelty on paper for his benefit, and turned the Cardinal from a disappointed past employer to an active and vengeful enemy. With that act, she gave him back Treville, the Musketeers, Paris, his whole life, while surrendering any remnants of her own. Looking back, what she did leaves her breathless and disbelieving, it seems so unlike her. She still can’t say why she did it, or what she hoped to gain. Was it some kind of repayment for protecting her from Catherine? Did she shrink back from the thought of destroying his second life as he believes she wrecked his first? Does she simply want him to think well of her? Her own motives are a mystery to her, except that, like always, they are bound up in Athos. She knows that much.

What she doesn’t know is if he accepted it as the gift it was, and if that gift blunted his anger at all. From his point of view, her actions led to him being humiliated, deceived, disgraced, ruined, shot, exiled, and drugged. She left him badly injured, defenceless, and alone in the house she burnt to ruins. What passed between them before she left seemed like something mending, like a step towards some strange kind of reconciliation, but she has no way of knowing if he views it the same. Perhaps all he saw was an unending series of bitter arguments, a meaningless coupling caused by adrenaline and stupidity, and him being almost-forcibly conscripted into carrying out her petty revenge on the Cardinal for him throwing her off.

Did he throw away the flowers she left him immediately? Perhaps the broken choker she intended for him is instead wrapped around a dead bouquet of forget-me-nots on the floor of the stable, ribbon frayed by the elements, metal heart rusting in the muck. Or perhaps the necklace is somewhere up in his new quarters, in a chest somewhere, or next to his bed, or under his pillow. She resists the urge to search the place and find out – there’s no guarantee he’s that drunk.

She wonders what he would do if she went and joined him, appearing in his room like a ghost, one he perhaps thought he’d laid to rest. She could shush his protests with her lips, draw him to the bed, whisper in his ear that it was nothing more than a dream, to be forgotten in the light of day. But no, if she sees him in that way, harsh realities will intrude immediately – she can hide her pregnancy in her clothes and cloaks, but pressed body to body he would feel the difference immediately. Another man might not, but he knows every curve and line of her, and he would notice that they have changed. And what would he think of it? He probably wouldn’t believe the child was anything to do with him, whatever she said. She winces at his imagined comments, cutting and cruel. 

Of course, that’s far from the worst case scenario. If he did believe the child was his, he might want to take it from her after it was born, put it in the care of some good nurse and visit as often as he could spare time. After all, he wouldn’t wish for her to raise his child, not if he still views her as a cold, callous killer, a monster who destroys all she touches. Perhaps it would be better for him to have it, since Athos at least has money and security to give the child, but she’s lost enough of herself to him over the years. This child is hers, growing inside her, nurtured by her body, made up of her own blood and need and love, and it will be no one else’s so long as she draws breath.

The sunlit fantasies she had once, long ago, of her and Athos and a child they made together, living happily ever after… those are a thing of the past, even if they linger painfully in her dreams. There is an overwhelming pain and hurt between them now she won’t let her child become successor to. It’s one thing to spit and snap and slice each other to ribbons, but anyone else who gets involved might become a victim of this storm of darkness and emotion between them, and her child will be no one’s victim, especially not her own. The child will grow up knowing that its mother loved its father, that she grieves him still, that their union was something beautiful that ended in the death of one of them, and that’s enough truth to share. Perhaps she will set some contingency, so that there is no way the child will be left homeless or helpless if she dies, so then it will know it has a father probably willing to take it in.

But when she thinks that, she finds herself already trying to amend it, trying to turn a definite line into a hazy border. She considers if instead she should tell the child about him when it’s fully grown – a son might be glad of a father who’s a Musketeer Captain, of the chances for advancement that could offer – but no, she can’t. Her child won’t know its mother as thief, murderer, fraud, and perhaps, by then, bigamist, not if she can help it. Not to mention Athos’s likely reaction. If he believed the child to be his son or daughter, he would be filled with fury towards her for her for all those years of concealment, and if he did not, he would be overtaken by rage at her perceived attempt to manipulate him. Either way, the child would feel anger, would know rejection, would be swept up in this dark current between her and Athos. Her main aim is for the child to be safe, so if she dies perhaps it will have to know of Athos, but her first priority after that is for it to grow up relatively happy and normal. Perhaps the child won’t be _entirely_ normal – she’ll see it’s capable with weapons, able to pick locks, and knows any other skills necessary to survival, whether it’s a son or daughter, because of the aforementioned aim of safety – but normal in other ways. Normal enough to believe its parents were good people who had a simple, happy life together, and who both loved their child and each other. So much of that is true it hurts to think, but there is a lot she will leave out – her child will never know how the scar on its mother’s neck came to be. If that means it also never knows its father is a Musketeer Captain, so be it.

Captain of the Musketeers, such an illustrious position, and unlike Comte, it’s one that must be earned. She’s oddly proud of him – and it’s a wifely thing, isn’t it, to be proud? He’s had practice being in charge of people thanks to his former title, and in her biased eyes he is by far the smartest of the Musketeers, so he’s a sensible choice, but she wonders how he likes it. Her memory throws up a hundred instances of hiding and listening to Captain Treville speak with the King, how Treville would patiently persuade him back to more considered courses of action with his brusque honesty and common sense, and she tries to envisage Athos in his place. She suspects the King is the victim of a lot more sarcastic barbs than previously, most of them no doubt flying right over his head. Athos has no patience with fools, and can never resist the temptation to share his opinion of them, even if it’s just through his expression or tone.

Of course, knowing Treville, it’s unlikely he’s handed over the task of dealing with the King to Athos. Both of them being what they are, she imagines their only concession to both of their new positions is that Athos now has a fancier uniform and handles more of the day-to-day training of the other Musketeers. Treville probably still talks with the King, assigns missions, makes the overarching decisions, and manages the finances; Athos probably still treats all the men as his equals, drinks more than the rest of the regiment put together, and rides out with the Inseparables for every mission. In time, perhaps they will adjust and transfer more of the responsibilities, but neither of them are men good at adapting to change, and both will probably cling fiercely to their previous lower ranks for some time.

She can see nothing but the outside of the building, but it’s still difficult to turn away. It’s always difficult to turn away.

X_X_X_X_X

The Duc de Barville dies quickly, but with little dignity. A smarter man would have been far more suspicious at the sudden attentions of a beautiful woman, especially given his lack of charm or looks, but he’s probably used to his title and wealth drawing designing women like flies to honey. He’s happy enough to take advantage of her interest, and she’s happy enough to take advantage of his consequent lack of caution, and it ends with him dead in his own bed, no mark of a struggle to be seen.

She doesn’t steal anything on the way out, because she’s always been aware that if her rage doesn’t get her killed there’s a chance her greed could do the job. Her thieving instincts are always there: _take_ , they say, _take everything you can, you will not get another chance, this is it, this is all you can do_. As a child she saw missed opportunities become death sentences for the other urchins around her, and so she always seized them, grasped them greedily, sucked everything she could out of every chance she saw.

She sees opportunities, and she seizes them, and it’s almost compulsive at this point. It’s always been that way: when Sarazin said he’d teach her to be the best, when she saw naked adoration in the face of a handsome Comte, when the cold eyes of the Cardinal first evaluated her, when Sebastian told her Gus’s group might have a place for her, and when Rochefort sent a letter with an offer in it. She always grabs the first chance that comes her way, because she can’t afford to assume another one will come. But now she wonders if this will prove a chance too far, because Rochefort’s eyes are colder than the coin her pays her in, and her husband is only streets away, and the noise of a dying Duc’s gasps are ringing in her ears.

Paris hasn’t changed at all.


	2. Chapter 2

The news of the death of the Duc de Barville is just one of the pieces of information that passes across Athos’s desk that week – the Captain of the Musketeers, unfortunately, cannot afford to neglect his mail the way Athos the common soldier could. It’s not information that interests him overmuch, considering it was by all accounts a natural death, but the news of his replacement arouses a bit more concern.

“Rochefort, on the council,” Treville says, the same disquiet creasing his brow when Athos brings it up during their almost daily discussion. “His Majesty is beginning to lean on him far too much.”

“Red Guards have taken over several more Musketeer duties,” Athos notes. It has not been a good week for the Garrison. “I’ve been told that even outside the royal residences, where the King rightfully falls under our protection, the Red Guard’s authority takes precedence. There’s double as many of them on duty at any given time, as well.”

“Well, as the Queen nears her time…” Treville shrugs and sighs, then rubs a frustrated hand at his forehead. “I don’t object to more guards, but it seems to me they turn away almost any who seek to speak to Their Majesties. I’m still allowed through, and so are the other ministers, but there’s few other contradicting viewpoints who gain entry these days. It’s probably only a matter of time before Red Guards relay even my messages to the King, and who knows what slant they’ll put on my words then?”

Not even a month back, and Rochefort has already become captain of the Red Guards, and now a council member as well. Rescuing General de Foix was a heroic act, Athos can’t disagree with that, but the man’s done little else to earn all the trust and respect the King’s lavishing him with. Mostly, he seems to trade on the appearance of doing things – the Red Guards have quickly unearthed half a dozen ‘threats’ to King and country that in Athos’s estimation were no such thing, and executed the culprits dramatically, that’s all. But each occurrence made the King question why no one had discovered these problems earlier. He’s anxious as he waits with bated breath to see if he has an heir, a daughter to marry off, or a tragic stillbirth to mourn, and that stress makes him edgy and willing to lash out. Unless the Musketeers discover how to identify potential traitors at birth, nothing will suffice to make him feel they aren’t failing him somehow.

Athos thinks it may be partly the loss of Richelieu influencing his thoughts. Dead men’s words are always more compelling, after all, and the late Cardinal had never been entirely subtle in his dislike of the Musketeers. Now he’s gone, Louis has inherited some of his dislike, as if he resents Treville and his men for surviving the death of their greatest critic. It’s becoming apparent they all underrated His Majesty’s dependence on the Cardinal – without the filter of the Cardinal’s cunning to remove most of the chaff, the King’s orders are impulsive, simplistic, and inconsistent. From that perspective, they should view Rochefort’s return as the arrival of a relieving force, but it’s impossible to when he makes it so clear that instead it’s the appearance of enemy troops. He might help rework the King’s ideas into something more sensible, but he twists them as he does so, and he’s not twisting them to the good of the country but to the harm of Treville. Making the Musketeers appear incompetent, Athos suspects, is merely a means to that end.

“Has the King spoken at all about choosing a First Minister?” Athos asks, not letting his thoughts colour his tone.

Treville gives him a sharp look anyway. “I believe he’s still mourning the Cardinal. It will probably be a while before he considers replacing him entirely.”

“You said when he asked you to join his cabinet, he implied you’d be chosen for the position in time. Is he still of the same mind?”

“God above, I don’t know anymore,” Treville says wearily. “I have no skill at this, this _game-playing_ , you know that, but it’s beginning to seem there’s little choice but for me to try and make a push to become First Minister. Once the appointment’s made, Rochefort will have to step back.”

“And if he becomes First Minister…”

“Then we’re back in the same position we were,” Treville says shortly.

“Not entirely.” Athos stares at a point above Treville’s head, not meeting his gaze. “Richelieu we could at least trust to work for the good of France, however misguided his attempts were, and we had influence over him we simply don’t have over Rochefort.” Less influence than Treville thought they had, admittedly, because before the end the Cardinal figured out just enough that he could’ve destroyed Aramis and the Queen with ease, but Athos can’t exactly say that. Richelieu took the secret to his grave and Athos hopes to God the rest of them manage to do that as well.

“That influence would have died in time,” Treville points out. “He was already taking steps to hide any proof and move any agents mentioned. But it did give us an advantage when we needed it.” He gives Athos a shrewd glance. “You never did explain how you got that information.”

“No, captain. I didn’t.”

“I’m no longer your captain… captain.” Treville gives a slight smile at that, but then returns to his previous point. “But perhaps someday you might like to tell me.”

“Is that your way of asking if my wife is still alive?” Athos asks bluntly. He can feel the ribbon secretly tied around his forearm. He’s worn it long enough now that he should barely be aware of it, except that every so often, it almost feels like it burns against his skin. Now is one of the times.

Treville has the grace to look apologetic. “I suppose it is. It’s evident from the confession you had her write that she worked for the Cardinal for five years, and one year of that would have been prior to Rochefort’s imprisonment. If she has any insight into Rochefort’s actions from back then, or perhaps some more information we could use to our advantage -”

“Then we would still have no idea where she is, and no way to track her down,” Athos says, voice monotone. He would know, he’s tried.

He thinks the idea he may have killed his wife instead of her escaping him has probably crossed all of his friends’ minds, even if only for a moment. Her disastrous betrayal, the absurdly detailed confession they believe he forced from her, his absolute unwillingness to discuss it, and her vanishing so completely all seem to support that chain of events. And then there’s the locket – he’d worn it tucked in his clothes, but it had often swung out at inopportune times, so nearly everyone around him saw it a time or two, and his friends more than most. It was too obviously a love-token, the kind of locket men kept a lock of hair or a lover’s picture in, for them not to realise it must be connected to her. They’ve probably also noted its disappearance.

On the other hand, he thinks it’s also occurred to them that he may have let her go instead of forcing her to face justice, unwilling to deal with her any further. He hadn’t deliberately set out to create a mystery. It’s simply that he doesn’t want to talk about it until he works it out in his own head, and almost half a year has still not been nearly enough time to do that.

“The men I sent to look into Perales’s death have returned,” Athos says, unsubtly changing the subject. It’s an easy jump – most thoughts lead back to his wife in some way for him, but assassination is closer than most.

Treville’s expression sharpens. “Anything?”

“Nothing. No one saw anything, heard anything, knows anything… it was completely useless.” Athos tries not to grind his teeth at the thought. “We still don’t even know why he decided to flee France, let alone the rest of it.”

“Maybe he saw the shape of things to come,” Treville says, ominously. At Athos’s look, he elaborates, “Anti-Spain sentiment is growing, and I don’t think it’s the usual grumbling. There’s outcry against the Queen, even against the babe she’s carrying, even here in the city. And there’s that woman claiming to be a prophetess out in the countryside – she’s got a small congregation at present, but it’s growing. The storm might not hit for months yet, but it _will_ hit.”

They both know that in the meantime, Rochefort will ensure the King sees anarchists, heretics and Spanish spies in every complaint, however mild. The storm itself might almost be a relief when it comes.

“When the Queen gives birth, that should quiet some of the rabble-rousers. If she delivers safely, then whether boy or girl, the child will be seen as proof she can give France an heir.” And if the King realises it’s not his child, the entire country will explode like a powder keg and peasants pretending to know the will of God will be the least of their problems. _Thanks for that, Aramis._

“Possibly.” Treville looks unconvinced.

After taking his leave of his former Captain, he runs into Aramis in the hallway almost immediately. It’s all he can do not to pinch the man’s ear between his thumb and forefinger and drag him out of there like a misbehaving child, twisting painfully the whole way.

“You’re not supposed to be in the Louvre,” he hisses instead. It was one of the first orders he’d given as Captain, getting Aramis up to his office for a private conversation in which he indicated Aramis would spend his time on other duties besides the traditional guarding of their monarchs. So Aramis has been occupied by training recruits, investigating issues, and guarding others at risk – or, on quiet days when there’s no good excuse for him not to be guarding Their Majesties, activities like cleaning the stables repeatedly. The others joke that power has corrupted Athos and made him spiteful, and he’s paying Aramis back for some old argument, but so far no one has really questioned it.

“That’s more likely to make the others suspicious than anything else,” Aramis points out quietly. It’s accurate – eventually, they will undoubtedly wonder why Athos thinks Aramis is better-suited to forking hay than standing between His Majesty and rioters – but Athos is fine being thought of as some petty, nasty taskmaster inexplicably targeting a friend if that obscures his real reasoning.

“I don’t care if they’re made suspicious!” Athos snaps. “They’re not the threat here. I would tell them myself if I didn’t envy their ignorance so much.”

When he’s in a room with Her Majesty, Aramis is about as subtle as d’Artagnan is in his pining for Constance, but at least the worst harm d’Artagnan can cause is Monsieur Bonacieux’s displeasure. If people in the palace start to notice how excessively solicitous Aramis is to the very-pregnant Queen, one or two could start to do some inconvenient mathematics. It’s not like Aramis doesn’t already have a reputation at court.

Aramis follows Athos out, acknowledging the point, although he doesn’t look too thrilled about it. 

As soon as they’re alone and out of the Louvre, he speaks. “You don’t understand, Athos. She’s got no one around her but ladies-in-waiting, none of whom she can trust, and doctors who barely seem to notice she exists provided they can prod at the child she carries. She told me herself no one’s conversed with her properly in weeks besides the King and Rochefort -”

“She shouldn’t be telling you _anything_ herself.” Athos sighs and softens his tone a little at Aramis’s expression. “I know it’s hard, Aramis, but you’re placing both of you at risk. The Cardinal guessed just from a few minutes with the two of you, and the Queen is never alone, for all that she may feel it.”

Aramis closes his eyes for a moment, hand coming up to grasp his cross, and when he opens them again they’re full of pleading. “You have no idea how hard it is. A woman I care for greatly is having my child – it should be a thing of celebration. How can I keep myself separate from everything I want? How can I let another man play parent to my child?”

“I think a better question is ‘how can I put a woman I care for and my unborn child at risk of execution?’” His voice, again, seems a little too harsh, but this time he feels it may be deserved. He stops Aramis with a hand on his arm and forces the other man to look at him. “The way you can prove you care for her is to keep her safe. The child as well. Everything else is pure selfishness.”

Aramis meets his hard gaze, then sighs and drops his own eyes in acquiescence. “I always wished for children, you know. I’ve been told I’m rather good with them. This is… this is not how I imagined it happening.”

“Few things in life happen the way we imagine,” Athos says darkly. He certainly never saw his life playing out this way.

X_X_X_X_X

“Chancellor Dupre,” Athos says thoughtfully, not for the first time. “Dead, just like the Duc de Barville.” Dupre’s no youth, he must be in his fifties, but the coincidence worries him. Treville had seemed just as concerned when they discussed it. Two members of the King’s council, dead, only two weeks apart.

“Not _just_ like,” Porthos says fairly. “Looks like he died from alcohol poisoning, of all things. No sign of a struggle, just went to sleep a bit too drunk and didn’t wake up. Friends say he always did like a drink or two, and it seems he went overboard.”

“But you don’t believe that.”

“Not entirely, no. No one saw him drunk that night and he wasn’t found till the following day. Bit convenient, that is.” Porthos shrugs. “His own wine, his own house, his own bed… but no one’d heard of him ever imbibing enough to get more’n tipsy before.”

“We should check over the house again,” Athos says decisively. “And look back into the Duc’s death as well, just in case. Take Aramis and go question de Barville’s servants, see if he did anything odd the day he died, and I’ll take d’Artagnan and try and find out what happened to Dupre.”

Porthos gives him a thoughtful look. “If it was murder, they’re a bit impatient, whoever they are. Killing the two of them so close together. Why risk it?”

“The Chancellor rarely visits town,” Athos points out. “He was only here because the Queen’s expected to give birth any day now. He wanted to get some affairs of state settled before that in case matters… complicated.” In other words, in case the Queen dies in childbirth, distracting everyone from day to day problems for the foreseeable future, throwing the King into mourning and the country into confusion and uncertainty. “Dupre always stayed in a small townhouse when he was here, and brought only a few servants. His estate in the country would be much more difficult to get access to and a stranger would stand out there. Maybe this was the best opportunity.”

They’re the only ones who seem perturbed by two deaths in such a short space of time. Treville mentioned it to the King, who seemed mildly put out by the men’s deaths but not exactly prostrate with grief, and Rochefort made a few jokes about Treville’s paranoia pointing in all the wrong directions. The subject had changed to some group of supposed radicals the Red Guards were investigating, despite that investigation being outside their purview, and Treville couldn’t bring the conversation back to their concerns without looking like he was desperately trying to pretend the Musketeers were also doing important work.

Of course, perhaps Rochefort is right and they’re imagining a conspiracy. Two men, neither of them young, dead of different causes, no signs of foul play. When phrased like that, it seems likely it is only a coincidence. Still, they lose nothing by looking into it.

“Nothing,” d’Artagnan says flatly, several hours later. “We have nothing. No one saw anything unusual, the Chancellor didn’t do anything strange, and there isn’t a single sign of foul play anywhere.”

“Why is it that coming up with nothing is only making me more suspicious?” Athos wonders dryly. 

He knows why, though. It’s all so… perfect. All the bottles the man drank are helpfully lined up on the table like a tally, his cup still has the dregs of the last bit of drink in it, another check at the morgue confirmed that his lips are stained red with wine and everything about his death was consistent with overdosing on alcohol. His servants confirmed he’d requested wine to be brought up to his room so he could have a cup or two while he worked, and he asked for only a single cup, and none of them saw or heard anyone else there. A few of the things in the room had been knocked over, but not in a way that indicates a struggle, appearing more like the late Chancellor had been trying to prepare for bed whilst extremely drunk. It’s an investigator’s dream, neatly tied up like a parcel, and Athos hates it.

“If it is a murder, I don’t think we’re going to be able to prove it.” As usual, d’Artagnan has the ability to bluntly state what Athos is thinking.

“No.”

D’Artagnan scowls. “Maybe the others did better.”

Exiting the house again, Athos frowns, catching a glimpse of swirling skirts from the corner of his eye and turning to look. There’s no one there.

“What is it?” d’Artagnan says, catching his gaze and turning.

“Probably nothing,” Athos says slowly. He’s tired and, apparently, starting to go mad with suspicion – but he could swear he saw something. There was a familiarity in that quick swirl of movement, something he can’t quite identify, but that makes his heart beat slightly too quickly in his chest. He studies the little street for a moment. It’s a long, narrow one, and he knows where it ends, since one of his taverns is along the main street and he’s stumbled down it drunk quite a few times. It doesn’t have many streets that split off from it, either. “Wait here a moment, would you? And stop anyone who comes out of that street.”

D’Artagnan nods, straightening. His expression sharpens into alertness and he positions himself slightly to the side of the alleyway, so that anyone rushing out would be unlikely to see him.

Athos moves quickly down another street, then another, and then he’s at the other end of the little alleyway. He starts to walk down it as quietly as he can, but he knows his footsteps echo slightly, and he tries to step softer. He’s all but stopping his breathing as he strains his ears for the sound of someone else nearby, but there’s no noise – just him, sneaking down a street in a way that’s slightly absurd in the full light of day.

Then he stops, suddenly winded as the scent fills his nostrils. He’d recognise her perfume anywhere. He could be a hundred years old and he’d inhale and immediately be back in that meadow with her, face buried in her hair, hand up her skirts, the sound of his wife gasping in joy, the world in perfect alignment, hours to spare and nothing to do but love her. The memory is sweet and bitter at once, and he can’t stop his face from twisting at the pain of it.

“Anne?” he asks out loud, voice cracking on the word, knowing how insane he’ll seem if it’s anyone but her. In fact, even if it is her, he may well seem insane.

Now he hears a slight scrape, but really it’s the smell he follows as much as that, like a dog catching a trail. It’s several quick steps down another little side-street and then she’s there in front of him, her own face twisted in chagrin. She’s swathed so completely in a long dark cloak so that even her face is barely visible under the raised hood, but it’s unmistakeably her, those wonderfully familiar green eyes surveying him with something like resignation.

It’s like catching something heavy in the stomach – an _oof_ as he loses his breath, a heavy dull pain radiating through him, and his mind scrambled from the shock of it. His gaze is locked on her face, on the pale perfection of it: the slight curve to pink lips, the lovely eyes narrowed, the dark brows knitted in what looks like concern, the loose ringlet dangling out of the hood. As he watches, she chews her lower lip anxiously before releasing it with a soundless sigh, straightening and facing him down with such confidence he could almost believe her moment of uncertainty never happened.

“Hello, Athos,” she says, as casually as if this is a chance meeting in the street.

He supposes that apart from her hiding from him, that’s essentially what it is, and then it occurs to him that maybe it isn’t a chance meeting at all – it’s unlike Milady to let him see her, and even more unlike her not to evade him easily once he does. Letting him catch her in a little dead-end alley isn’t just unusually careless, it’s completely uncharacteristic, and before he can stop himself he looks behind him and his hand goes to the hilt of his sword.

“Learning caution, are we?” Her voice is mocking now.

He turns back to her and experiences again that shock of amazement, of confused emotions running wild, that always accompanies the sight of her. He drinks her in, but he’s an alcoholic – it’s never possible for him to drink as much as he wants. “Better late than never,” he manages, unable to stop himself from moving closer, even though for all he knows she has a knife. In fact, knowing her, she definitely does, but the question is whether she wants to use it. “Are you here to complete your revenge?”

“I think I’m done with that.” She doesn’t step closer, or further away, but simply stands and studies him as he advances. “The question is, are you?”

Half a year of thinking about it and he still has no idea. Back in that short time together something shifted between them – from knowing she was telling the truth about Thomas, from her saving him from bleeding out after Catherine took a shot, and most of all from her strange parting gifts – but he doesn’t know what they are now, or what she is to him. What he does know is that he’s missed her, he’s missed her so terribly he trembles from holding himself back from reaching out to touch her – the urge is very nearly overwhelming. 

“Where have you been?”

“Elsewhere,” she drawls, like that’s a response. “After everything, Paris was starting to seem a little unwelcoming.”

There’s something different about her face, and it takes him a moment to narrow it down – it’s like the sharp lines of her features have relaxed slightly, prominent cheekbones softened by new curves to her cheeks. Her chin, her mouth, and even her slender neck share some of this softening, which isn’t plumpness so much as the suggestion of it. It’s not unattractive – in fact, she glows with good health, even more vital and vibrant than she is in his memories – but clearly, their time apart has been nicer to her than to him. 

“Why come back, then?” he asks. The words sound like an accusation, although he doesn’t mean them as one.

Still, her mouth twists to a scowl. “I’ll be gone soon, Athos. This is just a… brief visit. Constance Bonacieux is alive and well, and I think that means you’re bound by your word to let me go. Unless of course you’d like to prove your promises hollow once more.”

“Why did you do it?” It’s said with the hurt incomprehension of a child, and he winces as he hears it.

“My God, must we sing the same song every time? It’s grown old. You know why I did what I did,” she doesn’t spit the words, but it’s close, and her eyes flash with fury. “I worked for the Cardinal. It was my _job_ , and I didn’t cast the first stone, _you_ did. And I… yes, I wanted revenge on you. Was that so unreasonable a desire?”

“I wasn’t speaking of your betrayal,” he says, and sees her lips purse with disapproval at his word choice. “I was talking about you leaving. And I was talking about what you left. That evidence…”

“Is it easier, Athos, when I play Delilah, simple and spiteful? Then there’s nothing to confuse you, no pang of conscience to give you pause.”

“I’m not confused,” he says. Except of course he is – she’s a liar, a thief, a killer, his wife, his enemy, his saviour, his victim, a hundred conflicting things, and he should be furious and perhaps terrified that she’s back here but instead he’s furious she left and terrified she’s leaving again. Confusion isn’t the dominant emotion, but it’s still there.

It’s such a blatant lie she looks on the edge of laughter for a moment. He moves closer, and then before he can stop himself, he’s reaching to pull down the hood to see her face more easily. She clutches the rest of the cloak tighter around her but makes no attempt to stop him, simply staring up at him with wide eyes as he traces her cheek with his fingers. Her skin feels like warm silk against his fingertips and he never wants to stop touching her. “Why did you do it?” he says again, and now his voice comes out husky. He tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear and sees her shiver. “Why did you give me that? I know what it cost you, the danger it put you in.”

“Perhaps it was a trade,” she says, her own voice slightly uneven, as his trailing finger strokes down the ribbon of her new choker, and then reaches the thick chain whose ridges are as familiar to him as the bumps of her spine used to be. 

He doesn’t wind the chain around his fingers the way she once did, too amazed she’s letting him touch her at all to push his luck. Instead, he leans in slightly more, so her quickening breath ghosts across his face. “I thought the choker was intended as repayment for the locket.”

“It was.” 

He persists, although she doesn’t seem to be in a talkative mood. “It makes no sense. Why destroy my life, then turn around and give it back to me? What did you get out of it?”

She laughs a little shakily, although he doesn’t understand the joke. “If I gave you a life, Athos, surely it’s silly to quibble about motivation, or wonder what I got in return. And you did take a bullet for me – more or less.”

“I thought…” he trails off, raising his hand again to gently cup the curve of her cheek. He’s not sure what he thought then, just as he’s not sure what he thinks now. Here is what he knows: he knows he loves her, knows he wants her, knows in some strange bone-deep way that he needs her – and he knows that none of that knowledge means anything in the face of everything else between them. But his thoughts, well, those are simply a mess of confusion.

He thinks he wants to pull her against him, hold her there, keep her trapped in his arms, thinks he would like to recapture that strange alchemical transformation that occurred in the depths of his family’s estate after they cleaned and bandaged the injuries they’d caused in each other: lead into gold, poison to wine, enemies to lovers. He thinks he would like to see her naked again, and not just in the sense of lacking clothing.

He wonders how many men she’s had since then. He wonders how many she’s killed.

It’s that thought that starts his mind working properly again.

“Are you in Paris on business, then?” he says abruptly, dark suspicions about recent mysterious deaths already forming in the back of his mind. A killer so skilful they didn’t leave a single piece of evidence – but why would she be here, now, for that reason? The Cardinal’s dead and gone, and with him, her motivation. But he can’t ignore where she was when he spotted her. Was she watching him or the house?

“I don’t want to be who I was before,” she says, which isn’t an answer at all. “I want a new life. I’m trying to – I will soon – it’s complicated. Regardless, I’m not here to cause problems for you. I’ll be gone before you know it.” She catches his hand in her own, and lifts it off her cheek, stepping back with an almost regretful sigh.

He wishes he could believe her. He wishes he could step forward and reach out for her again. “Did you have anything to do with the Chancellor’s death?”

And there it is: reality intruding again as she glances away evasively. When he saw her, he thought – well, he thought almost nothing, nothing except _thank God she’s alright, she’s alive, she’s_ here, _I’ve been so worried_. But now the rest of his thoughts start to come back to him, and he remembers why he should worry less about her safety and more about the safety of those around her. Love, want, and need are all very well, but none of that is the same as trust, and he can’t trust her. Even when he knows what her goal is, he can never predict her plan to achieve it, how far she’ll go and who she’ll hurt, and since right now he has no clue of her motives he’s even more in the dark than usual.

One thing is very clear, though: she’s not back in Paris for him. He should feel relieved by that, but of course he’s not.

The hurt allows space for the anger to come back, for him to remember who she is and what she’s done. Yes, the last time they met she saved his life, and she left him a parting gift, and she didn’t have to do either of those things – but she also didn’t have to try and murder the Queen, or become the Cardinal’s pet killer and seductress, or ruin Treville’s reputation and Athos’s life by staging an assassination attempt. And when he thinks that, he remembers all the other things, remembers the way she lied about everything, the way she used him, the way she betrayed him, the way she drugged him, the way she left him. She is not, and has never been, on Athos’s side. Only on her own. If on rare occasions the two seem the same to him, it’s probably because he’s missing some of the facts, and God knows she’ll never fill in the blanks. 

The glance away by itself might not be enough to confirm his suspicions, but the way her face flushes slightly, and the way she shifts her weight… for an accomplished liar, sometimes her feelings are very transparent. She doesn’t even attempt a lie here, simply remains silent, and he wishes to God she’d just told him she had nothing to do with the Chancellor’s death.

“My God, Anne, you can’t be serious,” he hisses, taking a step so that he closes the little space between them once more, somewhere between horrified and furious. “You can’t put me in this position again.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says coolly.

“I am sick to death of having to choose between you and my duty,” he says, just as coldly, enunciating every word so she can’t pretend to misunderstand.

“As if that’s ever even been a choice, Athos.” One pale hand hovers at her throat for a moment before she drops it.

He feels a rush of shame, as she knew he would. “That’s not what I meant.”

He wonders if she thought he kept her existence secret from the others so long purely out of that shame, putting his own pride above his duty to Treville and to France until the attempt on the Queen’s life forced his decision. Oh, that was part of it, undoubtedly, but it wasn’t all of it, not when he looks at her and sees the only woman he’s ever loved or ever will love. Not when he looks at her even now and thinks his heart will slam its way out of his chest with relief that she’s _alive_ , relief that outweighs horror and guilt at that fact, relief that manages to temporarily disperse the icy cold emptiness he’s felt inside since the day he watched his wife hang. No, shame and pride were involved, but they weren’t what compelled his silence. He was protecting her even though he shouldn’t be, and people died for it. And yet he can’t stop himself from doing it again.

Every time he’s seen her since he discovered she worked for the Cardinal, he’s known it was his duty to stop her, to hold her back, to arrest her, perhaps to see her executed once more. He bears personal responsibility for the crimes she’s committed since the hanging, and that makes it doubly his duty to stop her from committing more, but apparently he’s unable to do that. Forget killing her himself, he’s incapable of even handing her over to the law to see it done, damn him. And now the Cardinal is dead and despite that she’s here again, killing people and all but challenging him to bring her to justice for it. Damn _her_.

Her eyes are steady on his face, and as always, he feels like she can look right into his head, to the tangled mess of love and guilt and fury. “I see,” is all she says, and he wonders if she does.

He forces his mind to work faster, despite the serious distraction of his own whirling emotions. Nothing was missing from the Chancellor and de Barville’s houses, and as far as he knows she has no reason to want either of them dead, let alone both. “You’re working for someone,” he states flatly.

She says nothing, which is as good as a response.

They’re probably paying her a lot more than he has on hand, but he has to at least try. He pulls out his coin-purse and pushes it at her, trying to close her hand around it with his own. “Here’s my counter-proposal – take everything I have, and get out of Paris before what you’re doing catches up to you.”

“Do you mean before you catch up to me?” A crooked smile crosses her face, but there’s little amusement in it. She pushes the little purse back at him. “I don’t want your money, Athos.” 

“Since when?”

That one lands, he can see it, and she inhales deeply a few times as if trying to force herself not to snap back at him. “Well,” she says eventually, voice poisonously sweet. “A captain’s wealth isn’t quite as tempting as a comte’s, is it?”

There’s some hidden meaning in her words, something else she’s trying to communicate, but he has no idea what it is, despite the speaking look she’s giving him. He’s too distracted by the dull thud of pain at the jibe. “No,” he says wearily, “I suppose it’s not.”

She sighs, suddenly looking just as exhausted as him. “Are we done here, Athos? Or will you drag me off to face justice? Or try to, at least.”

He doesn’t reply, but after a moment he steps back, letting her leave the alleyway. She brushes by him so closely that her arm grazes his, and he has to desperately fight the urge to pull her flush against him, despite how frustrated and angry he is right now, or perhaps even partly because of that. He should grab her for an entirely different reason – further questioning, perhaps even arrest, everything he should have done the last time they stood in an alley together – but if he does that he’ll have to follow up on it and he can’t bear to any more than he could then. And despite how many more questions he has lined up on the tip of his tongue ( _tell me again,_ please _, did you really love me?_ ), he can’t keep her here longer. If he keeps talking to her d’Artagnan will eventually show up here, and that will force the matter as well.

Perhaps he _should_ keep her occupied, and let d’Artagnan arrest her when he arrives. Athos can’t arrest her himself, not just because he seems constitutionally incapable of it but because he has no right to judge her for any crimes she commits, not after what he did to her more than five years ago now. D’Artagnan, on the other hand, has every right to arrest her for her crimes. That would be the height of sophistry, though – if he’s willing to set things up so d’Artagnan will capture her, he may as well capture her himself, it makes no difference to the result. And if he’s honest, he doesn’t want any of them to take her into custody. Someday, though, he needs to find a better way to atone for what he did to her than simply stopping himself from harming or arresting her. It would be easier if he knew what she wanted from him, why she appears and disappears seemingly at random, and tries to kill him yet saves his life, and throws insult at him with as much passion as kisses, and looks at him with eyes filled with nameless emotions and strange hopes.

Six months of thinking about her incessantly and it appears that the only conclusion he’s reached is that his wife is impossible to understand or predict.

X_X_X_X_X

“What’s that?”

Porthos shouldn’t have been able to creep up on Athos in such an open place. However, Athos is just drunk enough to have completely failed to notice his friend, and he reacts to the innocent question like a musket’s gone off right next to him, jerking upright so quickly he nearly drops the object in question. He manages to catch it, though, bunching it up and wrapping his fist around it so that he can feel the press of the metal heart against his palm and so that not even an edge of ribbon shows. He turns to give Porthos a look of annoyance.

“Sorry,” Porthos says genuinely. “Didn’t mean to startle you. Was just coming to let you know we didn’t find anything. D’Artagnan said you had no luck either?” 

It’s a sad commentary on his leadership style that his men know what taverns they should search to deliver mission reports, but since that’s far from his biggest problem Athos is happy to ignore it for now. “None,” he said, which may even be true. Or – _her skin like silk against his fingers, the crooked curve of her smile_ – yes, he had luck, he found exactly what he was looking for, in a manner of speaking. But unfortunately, what he found is both the last thing he needs and the only thing he wants, and he can no more pull his wife into his embrace like he dreamed than he can arrest the Chancellor and Duc’s murderer and bring them to justice. Once again she’s managed to combine dearest wish and worst nightmare, and he’s furious with her for it.

He sees Porthos’s gaze dropped to his clenched fist, and the other man visibly decide not to repeat his earlier question, but something about Porthos’s easy-going acceptance makes him give way despite this. With a sigh, he opens his hand, so that the ribbon and pendant are visible in the flickering candlelight that surrounds them.

It takes Porthos a moment to figure out what it is, and then his eyebrows climb slightly and he gives a little “huh” of comprehension. He can only have seen Milady de Winter a bare handful of times, but she’s memorable, and the chokers are oddly mesmerizing once you know exactly what they’re hiding.

“She left it,” Athos says shortly. “When she… escaped.”

Porthos doesn’t ask any follow-up questions, just gives a little hum of understanding.

“Treville mentioned her earlier,” Athos says, although he’s not sure why, since it’s not like Porthos will automatically jump to the conclusion he’s seen his wife today if he doesn’t come up with another reason why he’s brooding about her. Maybe it’s just that for once he wants to talk, and Porthos is one of the easiest people in the world to talk to. “And I suppose it made me think.”

“S’weird, how difficult it is to let go of the past,” Porthos says noncommittally, although something in his tone makes Athos wonder if he’s not just talking about Athos and his wife. 

“She took the locket, and she left this, and I still have no idea what she meant by it.” With a shrug and a sigh, he tucks the choker away again. He still has no idea what she meant by _any_ of it, that’s the problem, even now that he’s asked her. His wife, the eternally unfathomable.

“Noticed you weren’t wearing that anymore.” Porthos still seems curiously expressionless – most likely, he knows that if he says too much, delves too deeply, or reacts too strongly, Athos will stop talking at all. Not for the first time, he appreciates his friend’s steadiness and intuition. After a while just sitting and drinking, though, Porthos adds slowly, “I always wondered what it meant, y’know.”

Athos gives a humourless smile. “I spent a lot of time wondering that too. If it was supposed to remind me what she did, or what I did, or what we had… what I ruined… the kind of person I am…”

He thinks that perhaps it was actually much simpler than that. It was just a symbol to express an obvious truth: that he could never stop carrying her around with him, and nor should he. It didn’t remind him that he loved her, or that he hated her, or that he’d killed her, because there was never a moment he forgot any of those realities. He still misses the weight of it, though, even with the choker tied around his forearm. Now he thinks of the metal links heavy around his wife’s scarred neck, the locket disappearing into the warm depths of that obscuring cloak, the drape of the chain presumably distorted by the curves of her cleavage and stiff lines of her bodice, and he tries not to let his mind follow it down there. To no success, of course. He drinks heavily.

He can feel Porthos’s sympathetic gaze on him, knows the other man is concerned by what he’s said, by what he no doubt sees as Athos’s inexplicable self-hatred and self-destructiveness. From his friends’ point of view, he’s a good man who ran afoul of a creature as much succubus as woman, a man still punishing himself for actions that may have been misguided but were undeniably well-intentioned and perhaps even just. Their encounters with her haven’t shown anything but her cruellest side – they heard how she pretended to love him only to murder his brother, saw her do her damnedest to condemn a good woman to the pyre, were coldly manipulated by her into destroying their own lives and good names. They know her as a liar, a thief, a seductress, a schemer, and a cold-blooded killer: a woman capable of anything, however horrifying. She’s even committed treason.

Of course, so did Aramis, and the Queen herself, for that matter. An illicit coupling is morally better than murder, of course it is, he’s sure of that, but there’s no denying it has the potential to end in even more bloodshed. The Queen’s death at the hand of paid assassins: tragic, distressing, a King and country in mourning, but in time the King would remarry and the country would return to normal. On the other hand, if the King discovers he’s been cuckolded, he’ll have to put aside the Queen or even try and execute her, infuriating her powerful brother and probably leading directly to war with Spain. Her execution might also rouse the Holy Roman Emperor to outrage, since his wife is Her Majesty’s younger sister and still quite fond of her despite their years apart, giving yet another enemy a reason to move against them. And all for a brief affair born out of attraction and impulse, such a stupid, reckless little thing compared to the tens of thousands who could die as a result of it. Thinking of it makes him want to bury his fist in Aramis’s face, so it’s probably good the other man’s not here – unless, of course, he’s not here because at the Louvre mooning over Her Majesty again.

Even if Porthos knew about that, how quickly would he forgive Aramis for endangering everything they all believe in and are supposed to protect? Probably exactly as quickly as he forgave Athos for admitting to the murder of his own wife, come to think of it. So many good men think Athos is one of them, but they’re wrong.

He wonders if Anne de Breuil, or Milady de Winter as she calls herself now, is the only person in the world who sees him as he really is. No one’s ever known him the way she has, the depths he can sink to, the darkness he has in him. She sees through him. That should feel ironic, given how much of a constant mystery she is to him, but he thinks that she’s only a mystery to him in some ways – even now, after so many years, he can sometimes read her expressions like a book. He tells himself half the writing is forged, because the alternative would be too painful to contemplate ( _love and joy writ bright in her eyes as he twirls her around, and then they fall –_ ), but that doesn’t mean he can’t read it anyway. He sees uncertainty in a frown, evasiveness in a glance, desire in a shiver, regret in a sigh, surprise in a blink. And the storm of fire and fury that rages in her he understands instinctively, because he has his own.

There’s no one else in the world who could ever comprehend exactly what it is they lost six years ago, or how impossible it is to let go of. There’s no one else who could understand how he could hang her and yet take a bullet for her, or how she could set him up to die but do whatever it took to save his life. Two halves of the same damaged, twisted whole, that’s them: like to like, loss to loss, love to… whatever it is she feels. She’s told him, but he’s never sure with her, because he can’t trust her and he certainly can’t trust his own judgment when it comes to her.

He wants to make things right with her. There is no way to make things right with her.

He’s run out of wine again. When he tries to stand and get more, he finds his legs no longer work properly, and Porthos wraps a supporting arm around his shoulder with the ease of long practice. He’s probably been patiently waiting for this as Athos drinks and broods and drinks and broods. “C’mon. Let’s get you home, yeah?”

If he could still speak properly, he’d tell Porthos to take him anywhere but his home – because his wife is back in his life again, and she likes to burn them.


	3. Chapter 3

It doesn’t take her long to scope out the situation, despite her distraction. Treville and Rochefort both want to step into the Cardinal’s place as the King’s most trusted advisor and as First Minister. Treville took an early lead by agreeing to join His Majesty’s cabinet, ostensibly stepping into Richelieu’s shoes, but that’s also the cause of him flagging – what the King secretly wanted was Richelieu returned to life, or at least to be served by a carbon copy of him, and Treville has little in common with his predecessor. Rochefort, on the other hand, is excellent at aping his former mentor and steers the King deftly and deceitfully, and now he’s taken over the spare seat on the council it’s even easier to get his claws into His Majesty. The Queen’s no tie-breaker, because while she’s fond of the Musketeers, she is at least friendly with Rochefort too. As a result, each man’s place in the King’s esteem is uncertain and fragile, both of them trying to tip the King’s thinking in their favour while encouraging distrust in the other. The quiet struggle is causing fractures – in the council, the cabinet, the Louvre, and the King’s state of mind.

Rochefort appears to be trying to force the issue, but he’s not quite as impatient as she thought. It doesn’t take long to realise that her part in this is just the beginning of some greater scheme – after a spate of tragic deaths, cunningly uncovered conspiracies, and shocking betrayals, the King will have almost no one in his cabinet left to trust and his dependence on Rochefort will grow, but that’s not the end game. She has no idea what that end game is, precisely, but from some of his comments she’s deduced that in a year or two, once any suspicions about the current deaths and executions has been forgotten and he’s fully trusted by King and Queen alike, he’ll be requesting her return. Probably for a murder spree of much greater scope and severity, with even more important victims, intended to result in him truly being the power behind the throne. 

She’s already decided she won’t be answering that request, that she will in fact be in another country by then, completely uncontactable. Besides anything else, the job will almost certainly include the death of Treville – Rochefort’s stepping lightly, right now, or at least he thinks he is, but if he wants Louis to place faith only in him, Treville will have to die sooner or later. She’s just lucky he seems to be working slowly, spending his time charming the heavily-pregnant Queen, using Milady’s help to present the Red Guards as more competent than they are and the Musketeers as less, and focusing her other talents only on the most unscrupulous and manipulative of the ministers (and thus the most successful). She doesn’t want to kill Treville. If Athos found out… well. She doesn’t want that to happen.

As it is, her work now discredits Treville, but it otherwise will have no effect on Athos at all. Although he’s no longer Captain, Treville takes all responsibility for the Musketeers in front of the King, lauding them incessantly, defending them from criticism, and in general referring to them as if he still leads them. As a result, any consequences of them appearing incompetent will land directly on his shoulders. Athos himself probably won’t receive a share of the blame, although she’s sure he’ll blame himself, and she’s annoyed by the concern and guilt that awareness provokes within her. Perhaps he’ll blame her as well, if he figures out she’s involved in more than just a couple of anonymous killings – in this case, she admits his anger would be justified.

“Excellent work with that gang of anarchists,” Rochefort tells her today, uncharacteristically gleeful. “Their Majesties are halfway to seeing me as the only thing standing between their deaths and that of their unborn child.”

The gang of anarchists were, in fact, simply a group of friends who met up to drink and complain about the Queen, and the closest they came to real crime was violently abusing streetwalkers with Spanish features – not exactly a treasonous offence, if reprehensible. But thanks to the Red Guard’s discovery of carefully-planted gunpowder and seditious communiques, they’re now anarchists and traitors in the gaze of anyone who matters, and she’s quite a few livres richer.

She bows her head slightly at his words. Rochefort expects much more of a pretence of respect than Richelieu did, and while normally she would cheerfully disappoint his expectations, she’s unfortunately carrying a rather significant liability inside her. Sometimes when she edges too close to her usual sarcastic humour, she can see his hands twitch and clench, and thinks he’d like an excuse to wrap them around her throat. “You’re too kind, my lord.” It’s difficult to keep her tone from being mocking, but she manages it.

“Treville was fool enough to defend the Musketeers for failing to arrest them, as well,” he continues, gloating happily. “Even our gentle Queen was quite displeased with him for that, given the contents of those pamphlets – the references to ‘Spanish hellspawn’ almost put her on the edge of tears, my poor lady.”

She’s noticed he often dwells more on the Queen’s thoughts and feelings than the King’s, despite the real power being found through His Majesty. At first, she assumed it was because he was using her as his way to the King, playing on their old friendship, but it hadn’t taken her long to realise that friendship is not what he desires from her. That makes the game he’s playing a hundred times more dangerous, of course. He can’t really hope to have her, surely – it would be treason for them both, and Milady doubts Her Majesty would be willing to risk the block for _Rochefort_ , of all people – but sometimes when she sees the way his eyes glow as he speaks of the Queen, Milady feels a twinge of unease.

Of course, she’s uneasy in the general sense as well. He’s been paying her quite highly for each job, and he’s implied there will be a significant bonus when her services are no longer required (it had crossed her mind he meant death, of course, but that doesn’t fit with his apparent desire to hire her again in future). Despite that, and despite his threats, she’s seriously considering leaving before this goes bad. Her employer is erratic and dangerous, she’s sick of killing, her body is beginning to visibly change despite her efforts to camouflage it, and she’s already encountered Athos once and might again. And the hurt and anger on Athos’s face when he realised some of what she’s been doing… it was so easy for him to leap right to fury, and while in this case he’s right to, it still stings.

She didn’t intend to have regrets about anything she was doing. Unfortunately, she appears to have gained them anyway. Perhaps consciences are infectious.

“What’s that?” Rochefort asks, interrupting her thoughts. Apparently he’s done with his gloating for now. His cold eyes are focused on the locket, which has fallen out of the cloak. Its too-long chain and unexpected solidity means it often swings around when she moves – she should do something about it. Before she can tuck it away, he’s caught it in his hand, opening it idly as she stands there burning with well-hidden, impotent anger. “What a very… _sentimental_ piece of jewellery.”

“I like forget-me-nots,” she says coolly. “Do you find that somehow objectionable?” 

“I suppose not.” He twitches his shoulder in a shrug, after a moment, apparently deciding that it’s inconsequential, and letting the locket go. He returns to more important subjects, although he gives it a last thoughtful glance, perhaps wondering what would motivate a woman like her to carry something so obviously romantic in nature. “Your next target for assassination will be the archbishop.”

“Another death by illness or misadventure will be almost more suspicious than an outright murder,” she notes, suppressing her other misgivings for the moment to concentrate on practicalities. After all, it will throw the other two under more doubt and make the pattern more visible. The Musketeers have already spotted it, she knows, and once he knew she was about, it took Athos only moments to add two and two and get four: but if she mentions that to Rochefort, there’s a chance he’ll make her do something about it, and there’s nothing she wants less.

“So murder him, then.”

“Who would you like to be blamed for it?” she asks, feigning unconcern. Inwardly, she’s alert, waiting for him to reveal more of what he wants. There’s a bigger plan at work, and she’s curious. She’s also a little alarmed by how much work he seems to have for her. “I could make it appear that the Spanish -”

“No,” he replies, too quickly and harshly. He takes a deep breath, calming himself. “Not the Spanish. Someone else. Perhaps a heretic? A Protestant, even?”

“Are you sure?” she asks, keeping her voice low and respectful. “It would be easy enough to -”

“I said not the Spanish. Are you deaf?” His hands twitch violently again, but she’s stepped back, and he manages to control himself.

“As my lord wishes.” 

She curtseys deeply and retreats, thoughtful and increasingly concerned. What _is_ his plan? It clearly runs far deeper than simply winning the King’s trust. Given his imprisonment, he should want her to harm the Spanish, implicate them, heighten tensions between the countries – instead, his automatic response is to avoid that. He’d seemed even more close to violence than usual when she’d asked about that, and the flash in his eyes had been more than the usual madness.

She decides, with a certain amount of resignation, that she’s actually going to have to find out what the madman’s overarching plan is. Not because she’s curious, or to get a hold over him, or for any other idle or selfish reasons, although if anyone ever asks she’ll be sure to claim that’s why. But because she’s honestly beginning to worry that whatever this lunatic is planning won’t leave much of a France for Athos and his friends to give those terribly impassioned speeches about. And while personally, France matters little to her, her husband unfortunately matters a great deal.

X_X_X_X_X

Rochefort is surprisingly easy to follow. Since he’s not only a nobleman, but a former prisoner of Spain, he’s probably used to there being eyes on him at all times, so perhaps he doesn’t feel any kind of itch on his back from being watched. In her years of tailing people, she’s found that their instincts are a far greater threat than their eyes or ears.

As the leader of the Red Guard, a member of the council, and a nobleman in service to His Majesty, Rochefort qualifies in three different ways for three different sets of accommodation at the Louvre. Of course, he’s only taken one, and interestingly it’s his old set of rooms from five years ago. Milady finds this out from putting on a very plain dress and gossiping with the maids, unwilling to enter the palace herself yet, but she does make a note of it. If she needs to, she can get to him, but while she has no moral qualms about the idea of killing him she’s all too aware of how risky it would be.

Inside the Louvre, Rochefort spends most of his time toadying up to His Majesty, having intimate conversations with Her Majesty, insulting Treville to anyone who’ll listen, and ordering about the Red Guards. Outside the Louvre, he spends his time on investigations that shouldn’t be part of the Red Guards’ job, visiting an expensive-looking whorehouse, and stopping by a very dingy tavern that he alone enters through the back doorway unseen.

Since she has little interest in Rochefort’s sex life provided he never tries to involve her in it, she instead focuses her attention on the tavern. He doesn’t seem to drink there, instead speaking shortly to the man at the bar and occasionally passing him a note. In fact, no one really seems to drink there. It takes Milady only a few hours to realise that it’s a spy-nest – in her brief time observing, three people stop to talk intensely or to leave messages with the man at the bar, and most of them receive a small coinpurse in response, passed with a subtlety that would fool anyone not as accomplished at this as her.

She shifts her cloak to wear it more like a shawl, so that the upper curves of her breasts show while everything below her chest remains hidden by many layers of fabric, and bumps into the next man who goes to enter the place before he can avoid her. Attraction immediately overpowers suspicion as the man takes in her appearance, the curves that pregnancy has exaggerated still further. They exchange apologies, his gaze fixed lower than her face, and then she hurries off into an alleyway and then another to make sure he can’t follow her, losing him quickly. When she’s some distance away, she opens the folded paper he was going to give to the bartender – a badly-spelled summary of local unrest, a list of offensive insults heard about the Queen, and the movements of some merchant ships.

The man probably doesn’t even know who he works for, but to her it’s obvious – this has the Spanish written all over it. This is exactly the kind of information Vargas, the spymaster in Madrid, farms all the time from French peasants and paupers, using it to build up an overall view of France’s strengths and weaknesses. Which means that Rochefort must work for the Spanish as well. Once she considers it, that solves a lot of little mysteries and coincidences, such as the timing of his escape from prison. 

It does raise one interesting question, though – why have her kill the Spanish ambassador, then? She doubts the original plan was for Rochefort to ferry messages through a street tavern to Spain. Perales must have been his first contact. The man sent legitimate messages to Spain every day, it would have been simple enough to slip in Rochefort’s notes, and God knows Rochefort would have found that less offensive than the dingy pub he’s using now. But then, Perales had a reputation as relatively sensible man, and no man who had to work with Rochefort on a regular basis could possibly think that using him as a spy would lead to anything but a country in flames. No wonder he had to die.

Of course, this doesn’t tell her what Rochefort’s plan is. To serve France up to Spain, presumably, but she needs details, and preferably proof.

She’s been wandering through the streets as she explores different ideas, lost in thought, when she realises with a start she’s made it nearly all the way to the Garrison. She could sneak into Athos’s room, wait for him, tell him what she’s learnt, and then leave the rest to him. It’s very tempting. She certainly can’t stay in Paris much longer – it’s one thing to help some idiot nobleman kill his way to the top, quite another to become involved in international intrigue under the helm of a man playing so far above his level. Rochefort is no Richelieu, and whatever his plan is, it will most likely get her killed. Time to go.

But, then, she doesn’t know much yet. And she shouldn’t speak to Athos until she knows more. In fact, perhaps she shouldn’t speak to him at all. She could creep into the palace easily, turn up at Treville’s door – but that idea dies stillborn, remembering the last time Treville made a deal with her. No, Treville won’t trust her anymore, and nor will the other Musketeers, but Athos will at least listen. Perhaps he won’t believe her, but he’ll listen, surely.

So that’s the plan. She’ll see if she can find out anything more, and then she’ll go to him, explain and – well, not apologise. She doesn’t apologise. But perhaps she’ll try to look slightly regretful for her actions. In any case, she shouldn’t speak to him yet. Nevertheless, she finds herself staring up at the place she knows his room is, fighting the urge to go to him now despite that. She finds it too easy to come up with excuses to see him. It’s hard to believe she once managed to avoid him for a half a decade, getting only distant glimpses of him on streets and in taverns.

Did she let him catch her on purpose the other day? She’s been slowed slightly by her pregnancy, but she probably could have escaped him anyway. Stupidly, though, she’d wanted to see what he thought of her now, figure out where they stood. That they’re headed in different directions regardless of where they stand is irrelevant – she so very badly wanted to know if he still hated her, still wanted some kind of vengeance. From their discussion, she doesn’t think so. Oh, he got grumpy, and threw a few low blows her way, but he also stood so close to her she could feel the heat of him even through the thick cloak, and his blue eyes were glassy with emotion as he whispered questions to her. The realisation that struck her in a burning house, in a dark alleyway, and as they lay together on thin blankets over cold stone floors is still just as true – he loves her, whether he knows it or not. A part of her (a foolish, girlish part, a part she has no business listening to) thinks that perhaps how they feel about each other really is just as inevitable and endless as the tides, or the sun rising, or the forget-me-nots blooming. It’s a certainty, and she’s a person who’s known few of those.

Besides being everlasting, it is also inexplicable, the way she feels about him. Even aside from their tangled and terrible past, she would never have expected to fall for someone like him, and she certainly would never have expected to simply keep falling, even after all this time. Oh, he’s handsome enough, to her biased eyes the most attractive man she knows; he’s also clever, witty, formidable, skilled, and his stoicism hides real fire, all of which she considers attractive; but none of that accounts for how every bit of her comes alive at his presence. Their meeting the other day, for example. All he did was trail his fingers lightly down her face, and she was still more roused by that small gesture than any other man she’s shared her bed with has ever managed with all their kisses and caresses. His touch makes her burn, makes her glow, makes her shiver, makes her weep, makes her die. She would like to ascribe it to something surface and simple, something shallow, but she can’t, because it’s not lust even if that’s what it sometimes comes out as. The true explanation is too foolishly romantic to admit to – that she will always be his, and he will always be hers, and their bodies know the truth of it even when they don’t.

She remembers the jealousy in his eyes months ago when she pretended devotion to d’Artagnan, the way it burned him to think of them together, and marvels that he doesn’t realise how very different that was to anything they did. With others, her body is a tool and a weapon, and any mild pleasure she gets from using it that way has more to do with enjoyment of her own power and control than anything else. With him, she has no power, she has no control, and neither does he – they’re dragged as if pulled out to sea, left gasping, drowning, lost. With him she can’t be a tool or a weapon, no matter how she tries, only a woman. Instead of being coolly closed-off, she’s left split open, every nerve exposed, forced to feel everything to extremes, pleasure and pain and loss and love. Sometimes she thinks they will always hate each other a little purely because they hate being out of control, and there has never been any way to stem the emotion they feel, or corral it, or even to channel it. They can’t control it any more than they can control each other.

Once upon a time, that didn’t bother either of them. Back then, they found their lack of control gloriously freeing. But the ocean never looks quite the same once you’ve been sucked down by an undertow, once you’ve bled red salt into white, once you’ve breathed water that burns into lungs that break, once you’ve heaved and retched and tried to cough out what before seemed so beautiful. When they saw the danger hidden in themselves, in each other, and above all in what they felt, awe-inspiring became awful, dazzling became deadly, and transcendent became terrifying. However they view it, though, the substance hasn’t changed. Love is there, as vast and unchanging as the sea, and it always will be.

Milady’s been staring at the Garrison for far too long. At this rate she’ll spend more of her day brooding than even Athos does, and worse than that, she’s out in the open as she does it. She blinks away tears (pregnancy isn’t just making her slow, it’s making her sentimental) and turns to leave, abandoning her foolishness.

“What’re you doing here?”

It says a great deal about Porthos du Vallon that he grabs her upper arm to hold her, instead of going for her neck, which would be much more effective. It says even more that his free hand has her knife off her before she can even palm it. He’s not a brute, and he doesn’t like terrorising women, but apparently he doesn’t lack for caution. Of course, it’s hardly her only knife, but it was more of a reflex than a real attack, so she lets herself lean against the wall and bat her eyelashes up at him instead of trying to pull free.

“Seeing the sights of sunny Paris,” she deadpans.

“Yeah? How about a jail cell? There’s a sight.”

“Oh, I’ve seen a few of _those_ , trust me. After a while they all look the same.” She shifts a little, but his grip doesn’t budge – it’s not enough to bruise, but it’s a very effective restraint anyway. “What would you arrest me for, anyway?” Did Athos tell them about their encounter and his suspicions? For some reason she just assumed he’d told them nothing, but then, she’s assumed that in the past and been proven wrong.

“Seems to me we have a pretty detailed confession from you,” Porthos points out. His gaze doesn’t drop to the bared skin of her chest, not even when she wriggles to try and loosen his grip. He’s still focused completely on studying her face.

She rolls her eyes at him. “You’d have a hard time proving that was even written by a woman, let alone specifically by me. I put a lot of thought into what I wrote. And isn’t it a little contrary to take the one nice thing I’ve done for you lot and use it to condemn me?”

“Thought Athos forced it out of you,” Porthos says.

Well, at least she was right: her husband is as closed-mouthed as ever, even with his closest friends. “Yes, he turned over in his drugged sleep in a very threatening manner. And that yawn! I half-thought he was going to split his stitches and make me redo all my hard work.”

His grip on her loosens, slightly, and there’s something contemplative in his gaze. Before he can reply – hopefully not with any expression of gratitude, since then she’d have to shoot it down as cruelly as possible to prevent any misunderstandings – Aramis joins them with a low whistle. Of course. These two idiots never do seem to go more than twenty feet from each other.

“Now what’s this?” he asks Porthos, who still has her pinned to the wall.

“Saw her sneaking around.”

This stings her professional pride considerably. “Walking. I was _walking_ around. If I’d been sneaking, I assure you, you would _not_ have seen me.”

Aramis looks at her, lips pursed. “Madame de la Chapelle,” he greets her. His gaze is as flinty as Porthos’s was when he first grabbed her arm.

“Musketeer,” she says coolly in response, then returns her attention to her captor, who does seem to be warming up to her slightly. “I was walking down the street. Hardly an illegal activity. Would you let me go already?”

“In my experience, with you, there’s generally more to it than that,” Porthos notes. He’s not wrong, but since he has less experience with her than anyone but Aramis, she still feels like he has no right to say it. “What’re you doing so close to the Garrison?”

Purely to unnerve him, she leans forward slightly so that even more of her bare skin is on display and purrs up at him, “Perhaps I enjoy watching sweaty men play with swords. And no one’s more skilled at handling their own swords than the Musketeers – must be all that practice.”

He looks more amused than wrong-footed, damn him. “I didn’t even know you were back in Paris.”

“I’m sorry, I should have sent my card.”

“Dreadfully rude of you.” His grip by now has loosened to the point where she could twist out of it. He still does look concerned, though, and she doubts he’s mistaken banter for friendliness. Right now, he’s probably wondering if she meant what she said about the information she gave Athos and about sewing him up. If he decides she was being truthful, she thinks he’ll let her go – at least, until he has a chance to talk to Athos and figure out what the situation is. From the sound of it, Athos has told them nothing about how they left things, so Porthos has no idea if he should be treating her as the Musketeer’s worst enemy or just as a nonentity.

She glances over at Aramis, who’s been much quieter than normal. His gaze, predictably, _is_ fixed to her chest. “See something you like?” she asks snidely.

He looks up at her face, dark eyes feverishly bright. “Let her go,” he says to Porthos. “Now.”

“What? Listen, ‘m all for chivalry, but -”

She has a moment of swooping dread before Aramis confirms it’s the correct response by asking her bluntly, “How far along are you?”

“What?” Porthos says blankly, giving Aramis a stunned look. She can see when it processes enough for comprehension, and then he lets his arm drop immediately, freeing her.

While they appear to have gotten past letting any notions of gallantry restrain their actions toward her, apparently her being pregnant changes things. She nearly wants to snap at both of them that being with child hasn’t caused her to become so frail that a hand gripping her upper arm slightly too fiercely will bring her to tears, but it would be a lost cause, and that’s not really her concern right now. Aramis is still waiting for an answer to his question.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she snaps at him. Why the Hell is Aramis able to recognise pregnancy so easily, anyway? Everything from the top of her corset to the tips of her toes is thoroughly covered. Maybe he’s simply made a science out of staring inappropriately at women’s cleavages.

Porthos mutters a curse, rubbing a hand over his face and half-turning away, but Aramis stays focused on her. “Of course you don’t. And of course, of _course_ , it has nothing to do with why you’re here.” He can’t sustain his dry sarcasm, and it melts into frank sincerity in moments. “He deserves to know about this, you know, and we won’t keep him in the dark, not now we know.”

That’s even more of a shock, and she flinches from it. Since when did these idiots get so intuitive? Or did Athos tell them what passed between them? It felt so personal to her she would never have mentioned it to another. “It’s no one’s business but my own, Musketeer,” she says finally.

“Really? Not even the father’s?” Aramis shakes his head, but there’s a surprising amount of sympathy in his gaze. As a pregnant woman, seemingly she’s no longer someone to fear and hate in his eyes, but someone to care for and protect – how sickening. “I know your relationship is... complicated.” Well, there’s an understatement. “That you probably never want to see each other again. But if d’Artagnan is the child’s father, he’ll want to know.”

Wait. What?

She blinks at him, completely wrong-footed. “D’Artagnan has nothing to do with this child,” she tells him, made flat by shock. “Nothing at all. It isn’t his.”

“Really? Then whose is it?” He gives her a disbelieving look.

Milady supposes she should be flattered they don’t assume she has a dozen lovers at any given time, like d’Artagnan and her husband probably think. Of course, she still knows a lot of names she could spit out, but for some reason when she tries to pull one to the front of her mind she draws a blank. Instead, she tells the truth, or _a_ truth, at least. “It’s _mine_ ,” she growls. “And only mine.”

Aramis opens his mouth to speak again, but she doesn’t let him. Her second knife is in her hand in the space of a blink, and she has it up against his throat, hopefully correcting his erroneous assumption that the influence of a child within them softens all women to sweet harmlessness. He gapes at her, and Porthos turns and has his gun primed and pointed at her in the same movement. “Put it down,” he warns softly.

“Oh? Will you shoot me?” She pushes the knife lightly against his skin, purely to show how incredibly unthreatened she is, then stows it and turns and stalks away. They don’t follow her, surprisingly.

It takes a while for her heartrate to slow again. She doesn’t care about d’Artagnan knowing she’s expecting, obviously. Unless he’s imbecile enough to think women can carry for well over a year, as well as ignorant of the usual methods of conception, he’ll know in an instant he can’t be the father. Aramis must think they resumed their relationship briefly and yet fully while they were both trying to con the other, but d’Artagnan will quickly correct that misapprehension, she’s sure. But they’ll tell Athos as well, of course they will, probably sit him down and break it to him gently that his faithless wife has finally managed to present incontrovertible proof of that infidelity, and surely he’ll wonder. He’d be a fool not to.

She should have spat a name at them, said it was Sebastian’s, perhaps, but for some reason she’s almost as sick of lying as she is of cheating, stealing, killing. She doesn’t think it’s the influence of the babe – having a cub doesn’t blunt a tiger’s claws, and it won’t blunt hers either – instead, it was her thoughts before of when she was with Athos, remembering how it felt to really be _with_ him. Every morning waking up joyous, alive, warm, full of love and laughter, existing in a little sunny earthly paradise made up of him and her and them, happy beyond belief. That’s gone, and she can’t get it back, but she also can’t live entirely in the dark anymore, can’t be the Cardinal’s creature, the killer, the cold, cruel manipulator, the monster. She doesn’t believe in souls, but she’s been lacking something for a long time, and perhaps that’s what. She wants it back. She wants to feel whole again.

Why did she come back here? Well, money, of course. She won’t die giving birth in a cheap dingy shack with no company but her own screams. Her child won’t starve as she begs uselessly in a gutter, or sleep in an unused corner of a dirty brothel, or grow up with a family and past they’re too ashamed to own. A boy needs a start in the world, whether it’s the right clothes and respectability for an apprenticeship, money to start a business of his own, or quality arms and armour to be more than a common soldier. A girl needs a dowry if she wishes to wed and enough security to take her time choosing the man, and even more money and security if she doesn’t plan to marry.

But did she also come back for Athos? To see him? Maybe even to tell him? It was on the tip of her tongue to admit everything to him in that alleyway, to see how he responded. And all that time standing there, staring at his quarters, pining like a lovesick little girl, allowing herself to be so easily caught by those two idiots. Foolish, so very foolish.

Well, he’ll know now. It remains to be seen what he’ll do about it.

X_X_X_X_X

It’s a respectable midwife in a respectable street, which is unnerving enough. She has the money, but she’s used to seeking them in side-streets, since midwives like this are more likely to deal in judgment than abortifacients.

The woman’s words are more unnerving, though. “Are you sure?” Milady says, lips numb. “I haven’t felt anything like that. Does that mean – is it -”

The woman gives her a concerned look – coin can buy a lot of concern, but it seems to be genuine. “All I said was that kicking’s normal by now. It doesn’t necessarily mean there’s something wrong with the babe if it’s not – some sleep for longer than others, that’s all.”

“But it took me so much longer than it should to show, as well.” Milady is surprised by her own near-panic. She knows it should be a relief, if she loses it, that she should be glad to have the impossible burden of a child taken away from her, but the truth is she’s bonded with the thing, come to care for it, to want it. It’s inside her, and the idea that it could be a dead or sickly thing inside her is horrifying on many levels. Another part of her is already convinced that’s the case – what could a body like hers feed but a corpse? She _thinks_ she’s felt the strange little flutters and shivers the woman described earlier, the babe quickening within her, like in that alleyway, but perhaps she’s just fooling herself, and she certainly hasn’t felt a kick. What if it is dead? Or what if it’s alive, but too weak to survive outside her? She’s loved only one person in her life, and she lost them, even if it wasn’t to death, and she’s not sure she can survive a repeat.

The woman purses her lips, surveys her. “Have you been increasing? A week ago, two weeks, were you showing this much?”

“No, I’m bigger than I was then, I can barely close my corset at all now. But before then I was hardly showing – like I said, it’s quite late.” Another thought occurs to her, not quite as horrifying, but still unpleasant. “Could… could my last midwife have had the timing wrong? Could it be a few months less?” A moment’s reflection is enough to admit to herself that she still wants it to live, of course she does, and that she’ll still do whatever it takes to care for it whether it’s her husband’s or not, but she feels a swoop of disappointment at the thought. She doesn’t want to see an echo of Sebastian’s features in her child’s face. She wants Athos’s blue eyes, or sardonic smile, or that strange shy look he gives sometimes, or his laugh.

The midwife shakes her head. “No, I agree with her guess. It’s quickened, that’s the main thing. And if you’re showing more than you were even a week ago, that’s a good sign – means it’s growing a lot. Some babes can be slow about showing themselves, that’s all, whether it’s through curves or kicking. Likely as not you’ll be bruised from the inside and praying for it to quiet down in a few weeks.”

“And if I’m not?”

“Come back in two weeks, if you’ve felt nothing but those little movements,” the woman says. “There’s ways to persuade it to move about more – sweets, poking, things like that. We can try.”

Perhaps it’s her choices. All this running about, putting herself in danger, putting it in danger – but it’s not like she’s been in a real fight. She’s been careful. Surely she’d know, if she were hurting it. She’d feel it. A pain in her stomach. Something.

“Do you want to know if it’s a boy or not?” the midwife asks.

“Really. You can tell that?” This seems unlikely.

“I always make a guess, and I’m right for seven out of ten babes at least.” She looks proud of this, blind to the dubious look she’s getting. “You’re carrying low. A boy, definitely.”

That would be nice, if it were true. Boys have so many more options, so many more chances. If she has a daughter, she’ll find it more difficult – the world breaks girls, after all, and if her daughter takes after her, she’ll be broken harder than most. It would be a difficult choice for Milady – she could teach her to be as hard as her mother, and in the process break the girl a little anyway, or she could try and raise her to have a warm and open heart, only to watch the world crush it with brutal completeness. She’d have a lot to teach a daughter, but sometimes, she wishes she hadn’t learnt any of it.

Yes, a boy would be good – but right now, she wants a child that kicks more than she wants anything else.

X_X_X_X_X

“A moment of your time.” It could be a question, but not the way Milady phrases it.

The blonde shoots her a considering look and adopts an unconvincing expression of pious disapproval. “I don’t do ungodly things, not for my regular price, at least.”

Milady rolls her eyes and places the little stack of coin on the table with a heavy clink, and the girl immediately brightens at the sight of it.

“For that, I’m willing to be as sinful as you want,” she informs Milady, twirling a strand of hair between her fingers and giving her a smile. Her other hand goes straight to the tie of her revealing corset. “My, you’re a pretty one, aren’t you? Hmm, this could be fun…”

“As flattering as that is, I’m looking for information, not enjoyment,” Milady drawls, unimpressed by the woman’s coquetry.

Both hands drop to fist in skirts, and the blonde suddenly seems both older and smarter as she surveys Milady, her head tilted slightly to the side. “I see,” she says, and her lilting accent has roughened into something both lower and lower-class. “What’re you lookin’ for, exactly?”

“Rochefort,” she says, and the woman’s face hardens further.

She needs to bring out a few more coins, as it happens, since the dress that Rochefort brought the woman to wear for their encounters has clearly had bloodstains cleaned out, and apparently that’s because the last girl “betrayed him”. This woman’s no fool, and she’s not doing the same, at least not cheaply. But the negotiation goes quickly despite that, because under the surface of it she’s also not so different to Milady and they both know what they want.

After all this expense, it would be a let-down if Rochefort weren’t the talkative type, or the kind with absurdly detailed fantasies and roleplays, but as she soon finds out, he’s both.

“Has me pretend to be the Queen.” The woman’s face twists. “Crown and all. It’s more common than you’d think, as pretty as Her Majesty is, but most men aren’t so… specific.”

“Please be just as specific,” Milady says. “At least in terms of what he says. You can keep any details about the actual act to yourself, for the sake of my sanity.” She’s hardly a prude, but this is _Rochefort_ , so she really doesn’t want to know _anything_. Except for what’s useful to know, of course.

Most of it’s fairly standard – creepy, of course, but standard. Loved you, missed you, ached for you, blah blah, take me, despise my husband, only want you, blah. Rochefort isn’t exactly a playwright, and she’s already got a pretty good idea about his obsession with the Queen. But then there’s one titbit that makes Milady lean forward in her chair. “He had you say _what_?”

“Only the once,” the woman says with a shrug.

Once is enough, when you’re making a prostitute pretending to be the Queen of France address you as her husband and consort. Consort? Is the man mad? (Well, yes, but this particular madness is surprising.) Monarchies do not work that way, or at least they don’t in France. Her Majesty won’t rule if His Majesty dies. Assuming she has a son, she could maybe be regent – but no, there’s no way she’d be able to hold onto the throne for an infant Dauphin, not with the Cardinal dead and unable to help her, not with the Prince of Orleans’s regularly scheduled attempted coups, not with how hated Spain is…

…Spain. He works for Spain. For Her Majesty’s brother, to be more precise, the only strong ally the Queen would have if she were sole regent for a son (a son she doesn’t even have yet).

So this is clearly a long-term plan. If Her Majesty has a daughter or a stillborn, killing Louis will simply place Louis’s brother on the throne, which will weaken France but not fracture it. That’s probably not Spain’s preferred outcome – they’d lose their connection to France through the current Queen, putting them in a worse position than they are now, if anything, unless they could make some deal that benefits them. Rochefort needs to wait and find out if the Queen has a son or wait for the next pregnancy if she delivers a daughter, he needs to be sure that he alone is the person she’ll lean on for advice if Louis dies, and he needs to make sure she’ll call on her brother’s aid without hesitation. And since it seems that he’s also madly in love with the Queen, he’ll probably want to be fairly sure of her devotion to him before he frees her up for a possible affair, or even remarriage. Even if the Queen has a son, though, a lot of children die in their first few months on this earth (without her meaning to, her hands come to rest on the now-obvious curve of her belly, but it’s as still as ever), so it would be best to wait until you were sure the new Dauphin was strong.

She is suddenly sure that the larger job Rochefort plans to call her back for in time is not the death of Treville, though that may be part of his plan. It’s the death of the King.

Milady has been involved in a great many plans and schemes in her time. This isn’t even her first brush with treason – but she found trying to kill Her Majesty somewhat confronting, for the sheer scale of it as well as the likely fallout, and the idea of killing the King is ten times worse. Rochefort can’t possibly believe he has enough livres to tempt her into something that stupid, can he?

She wonders if she’s jumping to conclusions – but no, nobody _casually_ mentions the death of a King, not someone like Rochefort, not even in some disturbing fantasy. It’s not unheard of for even speaking of the death of a monarch to be counted as conspiracy to cause treason on the part of the speaker. For Rochefort to speak of it in an anticipatory way, all but saying he expects the King’s death, and that he plans to have the King’s widow… no, it’s not an idle fantasy, not for him.

Milady leaves abruptly, without thanking the woman, but she’s probably used to that.

She knows what she should do, now. Flee as fast as she can, as far as she can. To another country, even. A pretty French widow whose late husband left her a decent sum could do well in England, regardless of whether or not she has a child. Some men like the look of a woman with a babe in her arms, after all. She could shed her past as easily as a snake sheds its skin, and be born anew, find something of the peace she’s been dreaming of. Rochefort would never find her there. In England she’ll never stumble into involvement in high treason – well, she’s unlikely to, anyway, although perhaps it’s not _completely_ impossible. Somehow she does seem to attract these situations.

Of course, that’s what she _should_ do. She won’t, or at least she won’t yet. If she leaves, Rochefort will simply hire someone else, and the problem won’t disappear. There’s no way he can carry out a scheme like that without Athos and his friends getting all tangled up in it, they’ll be in completely over their heads if she doesn’t at least let them know what’s going on, and while she’s ambivalent about the rest of them she’s decided she no longer wants Athos dead. Of course, she still has no proof of anything. If they don’t believe her, that’s their own problem, though, and she’ll leave for England and wash her hands of the whole business. Well, she’ll try to, at least, although that nagging conscience inside her makes her pause and wonder if she’ll really be able to leave things as they are.

It’s time to speak to Athos.


	4. Chapter 4

“…So what do you think, should I speak to her about it again once she’s well?”

Athos blinks, raising his gaze from his drink, which he’s been contemplating for some time. D’Artagnan’s looking at him earnestly. “Yes,” he hazards.

D’Artagnan’s intent look fades to a smile. “You’ve no idea what I was asking about, do you?”

“None at all,” he admits. He racks his slightly wine-fogged brain, trying to remember where this conversation started. “Wait, something about the Queen and Constance, wasn’t it?” 

D’Artagnan launches into the explanation again, with just as much fervour, and Athos nods and pays enough attention this time to get a vague idea of what his young friend is talking about. D’Artagnan’s clearly put a great deal of thought into how to help out Madame Bonacieux, or perhaps just a great deal of thought into how to encourage her to no longer be Madame Bonacieux. Still, it’s not a bad idea. It seems Aramis isn’t the only one who’s noticed the Queen’s loneliness, and d’Artagnan’s plan has the merit of not being as completely fucking catastrophic as Aramis’s attempts to abate that loneliness.

Of course, nothing can come of it at present – he just heard from Treville an hour ago that the Queen’s confined to her rooms, in expectation of giving birth within the next few days. Athos has no idea if he should tell Aramis that or not, but since d’Artagnan already knows, he supposes the information will make its way to his friend eventually, and then he’ll have to stop him from pacing the corridors like the expectant father he can never admit to being. Since royal confinement can last weeks, someone would definitely notice Aramis’s presence eventually.

“D’you have any idea how long it took us to find you two?” Aramis asks, dropping into the chair beside Athos’s, as if summoned by his thoughts.

Athos looks up and the dry response he was going to make dies on his lips. Judging by his expression, perhaps Aramis already knows about the Queen’s confinement. Then he sees Porthos’s face, which is just as concerned, and realises perhaps it’s more than that. He takes a fortifying drink and then asks flatly, “What is it?”

D’Artagnan, interrupted mid-speech, looks between the two of them as well. “What’s happened? Are you all right?”

“Fine,” Porthos says, uncharacteristically sombre. “Listen, we need to talk to you. Both of you.”

“Is it the Queen?” d’Artagnan asks, eyes widening slightly. “Athos only just told me -”

“Told you what? What’s happened to Her Majesty?” Aramis’s eyes go wide with fear as well, and Athos flicks him a minatory glance for his lack of subtlety.

“She’s in confinement, that’s all,” Athos says bluntly. He stares the other man down. “Unless you’ve heard more than that, then as far as we know, everything’s fine. She has doctors and attendants enough for half of France.”

It takes a long moment, but then Aramis visibly forces himself to relax, and pastes on his usual devil-may-care smile, although a slight flush builds on his cheekbones as he avoids Athos’s gaze. “Ah. That’s good to know,” he says, but Athos can see his hands tightening on the edge of the table. “Well, that makes our news even more interestingly-timed, I suppose.”

“Is it private?” Athos asks warningly. If the news is anything to do with the Queen, he doesn’t want Aramis to say a word. The man’s so obvious in his feelings that Athos thinks the only reason no one else has picked up on what happened yet is because of the sheer incongruousness of the Queen sleeping with a lowly Musketeer. He wouldn’t wish his own headache onto Porthos and d’Artagnan, although he must admit he’d take a certain amount of pleasure in their horrified reactions. “Something that shouldn’t be discussed in public, in other words?”

Porthos gives them both a confused glance, probably feeling excluded from the silent conversation accompanying their coded one. It was just the three of them for a very long time, and while they’ve always had their own secrets, it’s rare for two to keep something from the third. Porthos won’t push, and he’ll trust there’s a reason for whatever he’s missing, but that doesn’t mean he’s not feeling the divide caused by it.

“Private, maybe, but not in that way,” Aramis says. “It’s about… well. Maybe we should stick close to the booze for this discussion.”

Athos picks up his drink with a sigh, suddenly realising where this is going. Their concerned looks at him are very telling. Really, he should have figured it out from the first glance at him. No, this issue is not Aramis’s, it’s his. It will always be his, for all that they’re giving d’Artagnan worried looks as well.

“Milady’s back in Paris,” Porthos breaks it to them as gently as he can, which in this case isn’t very.

“Oh, _wonderful_ ,” d’Artagnan says, and slugs back some of his drink. “Just what we need right now.”

Athos doesn’t say anything. If there’s a moment to come clean – admit that he already knew, that he’s had a conversation with her, and also that he has a fair idea what she’s doing here – this is probably it. Instead, he tightens his grip around his mug and remains silent. There are some things that should remain private between a husband and wife, he thinks with dry amusement, and for them that seems to be every single encounter they have. Even to his closest friends, he’s not in the habit of baring his soul, and since his wife has had a stranglehold on that for years it’s impossible to speak of her without revealing it.

“There’s more.” Aramis can’t seem to decide who he should be directing his sympathetic gaze at, so his eyes dart back and forth between Athos and d’Artagnan.

Again, Porthos is the one to throw the bomb, tone gentle but words blunt. “She’s expecting a child.”

Athos freezes. His automatic response is incredulity – _no, she isn’t, she can’t be_ – but he restrains it. He focuses on breathing, because suddenly it seems all the air has gone from the room, and there’s a dull sort of buzzing in his ears. A thousand stupid memories come into his mind – not even real memories, but memories of fantasies, imaginings. Lazy half-dreams when he woke up in the morning and stroked his fingers along the curve of her stomach and pictured it swelling, idle thoughts when he passed through the hallway the old nursery was in and imagined the echo of children’s laughter, little discussions of a small son or daughter they would teach to walk and speak and ride.

Abruptly, he feels sick. She’s taken so much of what he loved and ground it to ash, and he hates that she’s capable of doing it again, and in this case, doing it to a dream he’d almost forgotten in the wake of everything else. No, not ground it to ash, instead she’s twisted it, like she always manages to do – _here is what you wanted, but not quite_. She’s a genie from an old tale and she can always find the loophole in his wishes to make him choke on them. Once upon a time he wanted a child as a sort of tangible, living proof of the love between them – instead, she’ll produce one as proof of how she’s spent years continuously betraying that love with other men. He would rather she just tried to cut his throat again, a straightforward and honest revenge, matching murder with murder, than keep gutting him in all these new and imaginative ways. 

Except apparently, this isn’t about him – she hadn’t rubbed it in his face, hadn’t tormented him with it, had instead concealed it from him. It’s unlike her to spare his feelings, and he wonders bitterly if her discretion this time is because she truly sees her pregnancy as being entirely irrelevant to him, only a matter of interest for her and whatever man she chose to take to her bed and create new life with. Is he still around, whoever he is? Surely not. No man would let the mother of his child take such foolish risks as she takes right now.

His wife with a child. He pictures her lovely features writ small on a child’s face, but mingling with those of a man he does not know and would quite like to kill – green eyes, but of a different shape; curling and tumbling hair, but blonde as corn or red as flame; a slightly gap-toothed grin, set on an otherwise unfamiliar face. There is not enough wine in the world to block out the pain of that.

“A _child_?” d’Artagnan says, just as incredulous. He pauses, taking in Aramis’s and Porthos’s expressions. “Why’re you looking at me like that?”

“Given the timing,” Aramis says delicately. He’s trying to keep his focus entirely on the conversation, but Athos can see it’s an effort – part of his mind is clearly at the Louvre, with the Queen. “Considering everything – well, I mean, that whole disaster was six months ago, you know, and she turns up now, right outside the Garrison, seemingly far enough along that she has to cover it up with cloaks -”

That explains the thick cloak she wore in the alleyway, the way her posture seemed ever so slightly different than he remembered, the new curves to her face, but that’s not what makes Athos’s lungs burn with the effort of forcing breaths in and out. Six months ago, he thinks distantly, dizzily. Yes, it was six months ago. He knows that, but he hadn’t connected it immediately; had, he supposes, assumed she was somewhat earlier in her pregnancy than that. How far along is she? Could it – but no, that’s absurd, surely, desperate wishful thinking, and nothing more. It was only once, and so long ago, and it can’t be. He doesn’t want to think of his wife having a child with another man – doesn’t want to think with his wife with another man at all, but this is much worse – so of course he’d like to cling to any delusion that helps him pretend that’s not what’s happening. But it is still only a delusion. It can’t be his. It can’t be. Surely. Too impossible, too unlikely, too tempting to believe in. But he wishes –

D’Artagnan looks between Aramis and Porthos, confusion gradually giving way to comprehension. “Wait, you think it’s mine? It’s not.”

“That’s what she said, but she also said there wasn’t a father, and I wouldn’t like to be the one trying to sell that story to the Pope,” Aramis says. “If you’re the father -”

“I’m _not_.”

“Can you really be sure of that?” Aramis is slightly too blunt.

Porthos’s worried gaze is fixed on Athos, who’s now gripping his tankard so hard he’s a little worried something will break – perhaps the tankard, perhaps his hand, who can say? Is the thought of his wife having a child by d’Artagnan better or worse than that of her having it by some strange, faceless man he’s never met? Worse, he thinks, infinitely worse – he prefers to pretend that nothing ever occurred between the two of them, to block it from his mind completely, and having physical proof of it would be agonising.

“Yes, I can be!” d’Artagnan’s somewhere between annoyed and amused by this. “I can be completely sure of that. My attempts to convince her of my devotion didn’t go to those lengths, you know, and she didn’t try and force the matter.” He shakes his head at Aramis, exasperated, so focused on his interrogator he hasn’t realised the strength of Athos’s reaction. “When I told you I only shared her bed before I met you, I meant it. And even then, the things we did weren’t – wouldn’t cause -”

Now he remembers Athos’s presence, and cuts himself off with a sort of choking noise. “She… made sure it wouldn’t happen,” he settles on finally, and still looks mildly horrified by his own words.

Athos isn’t a client of any of Paris’s various brothels, and never has been. But the Musketeers are soldiers, and soldiers gossip like fishwives, and one of soldiers’ favourite subjects to gossip about is women and the things they do with them. So he knows a lot of the ladies of the night employed in those various places try to lessen the risk of disease or pregnancy by a variety of innovative and sometimes-pleasurable strategies. If he hadn’t been doing his best not to consider anything his wife does in other men’s beds, it might have occurred to him she’s smart enough to mimic such strategies.

She hadn’t done that with him, of course, and it probably would have shocked him if she had. The vast majority of his experience with bedding women has been with her, within the bounds of matrimony, and while none of their activities were explicitly for the sole intent of creating an heir, they’d certainly never gone to any lengths to avoid that outcome. It was just… assumed to be part of marriage, really, assumed that pregnancy would eventually occur, even while pleasure and closeness remained the main aim for them. It never would have crossed his mind to try and take any precautions against making a child.

Of course, if she tries to avoid conceiving with other men, and he knows she failed to take those precautions with him –

No. No, he shouldn’t jump to conclusions. But his thoughts are divided, half of his mind darting from place to place and extreme to extreme, the other half frozen in dull unmoving confusion, stalled and stuck.

“Wouldn’t have thought she’d want a child,” Porthos remarks, bringing Athos back to earth with a thump. He realises he’s been still for some time, staring into the air, and that all of his friends are surveying him with varying degrees of concern.

He drains his drink, and then takes d’Artagnan’s mug from his friend’s unresisting hand and starts to down it as well. By the time he’s halfway through it, he’s regained enough control to say, voice slightly shaky but still dry, “Accidents happen.” 

“Well, yes,” Aramis says. He looks relieved in the light of d’Artagnan’s confession and Athos’s apparent recovery from the shock, but his mouth twists in something like revulsion as he continues. “But accidents can also be dealt with. The Church frowns upon it, of course, but -”

“Of course,” Athos echoes a little blankly. He’s slow, sluggish, trying to grapple with two equally staggering possibilities – one wonderful but also impossible and terrifying, one horrible but probably more likely, and he doesn’t have much attention to spare for the conversation happening. He doesn’t know much about – well, women’s affairs. He’s vaguely conscious that there’s ways to avoid or end pregnancies, otherwise there would be no reason for priests to preach against doing so, but those ways have always been dark mysteries respectable God-fearing men and women know nothing about.

Of course, respectable and God-fearing are not words he would use to describe Milady de Winter.

“Wait, how can accidents be dealt with?” d’Artagnan asks, confused. He’s relatively inexperienced with women, from the countryside, and also not a frequenter of brothels, so it’s understandable this subject would be even more arcane to him than it is to Athos.

“Don’t know much about the specifics myself,” Porthos says easily, gaze still on Athos. He kicks Aramis under the table to get his attention and then jerks his head towards the bar meaningfully. Aramis grabs Athos’s empty mug with a nod and disappears in that direction as Porthos continues. “But I’ve heard there’s herbs that can remove a child at the start of it. Also stairs, and hot baths, and needles, but as you can imagine I didn’t chase up _that_ subject much when Flea mentioned it.”

He’s so matter-of-fact about it, it takes some of the bad taste out of the topic.

Athos finishes off the rest of d’Artagnan’s drink, and hands the mug back to him.

“Thanks,” d’Artagnan says with an eye-roll. “I’d better go join Aramis then. This place is getting busy. You want one too, Porthos?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Porthos says, passing over a few coins, and d’Artagnan heads over to the bar. Porthos’s gaze is still fixed on Athos’s face, as if he’s searching for something.

“What?” Athos says, finally.

Porthos drops his gaze to the table, looking like he wishes he had a drink to contemplate. “I’m only gonna ask this once, Athos. Then, I swear, I’ll never mention it again -”

“Yes,” Athos says, before Porthos can come to the point, because once again, it’s pretty obvious where this is heading. Aramis is too distracted by everything that’s happening with the Queen to notice, and d’Artagnan’s dislike of Milady is too extreme for him to see past it, but Porthos is a lot more perceptive than people give him credit for. “Yes. It might be mine.”

X_X_X_X_X

As he goes about his work he thinks he sees her in every street, out of the corner of his eye, but of course she’s nowhere to be found. She said she’d be gone before he knew it, and perhaps this was the ‘it’ she was referring to, this pregnancy she let his friends inform him of. But then, he’s only her husband, after all, why would she tell him anything?

After such a frustrating, fruitless week, it’s no surprise that he finds himself back at the tavern slogging his way through bottles of wine with a dull determination. It’s one of those nights where however much he drinks, real intoxication seems impossible – he can make himself nauseous or dizzy with wine, but he can’t slow his brain, can’t dull his thoughts. Sobriety remains no matter how much he drinks.

So when he gives up and returns to his quarters, he’s not soused and stumbling. He’s alert, and aware, and he notices her presence immediately.

“Anne,” he says, and he knows it comes out strangled.

“Athos,” she mimics. She’s leaning against the wall, arms crossed, staring at him. Not the ghost or hallucination that haunted him for five fucking years, who drove him to throw bottles at walls and roar at the ceiling, who broke him down every day with the memory of what he’d done and what he’d lost, but the real her. The real her breaks him far more efficiently, in some ways, so he shouldn’t feel his pulse jump in his throat and his heart twist with painful joy and his breath stutter at the sight of her, but of course he does.

That same thick cloak is wrapped around her, neck to floor. My God, he should have known.

He strides forward, furiously angry and hurt. She doesn’t stop him as he pulls apart her arms so they’re by her side instead and then yanks open the cloak with rough hands, baring her to his gaze. She looks slightly to the side, instead, eyes raised in exasperation like someone submitting to a rather boring examination by a doctor.

Her bodice is so loose there’s barely enough string to tie it closed, but her breasts spill over the top, and the curve of her stomach is unmistakeable. She’s pregnant, perhaps very pregnant – he’s no midwife, to guess weeks and months, but it’s no surprise she needs that thick, overlarge cloak to hide it.

“Something you forgot to mention the other week?” he asks scathingly.

“We need to talk,” she says, ignoring his anger and shaking off his hands to pull the cloak closer around her again.

“I’d say we do.”

“Not about _that_ ,” she says, waving a hand dismissively. “That’s my body and my business, Athos, not yours.”

It feels like a blow. “Not my business,” he says dully, feeling like he’s tasting the words as he says them, and they’re bitter. So there it is, then, the answer to the question he didn’t even have the chance to ask. He shoves away from her in a broken, pained movement, backing to the other side of the room, wanting nothing so much as another drink. Any hint of composure completely lost. “I see.”

She sighs, pulls the cloak even closer, as if trying to hide her condition from his eyes again, as if she could somehow undo the fact he knows now. “That’s not – that isn’t – I didn’t mean it like that.”

And that causes a surge of hope – her words are yanking him in every direction, right now, and he doesn’t have the endurance to take much more of it. “Speak plainly, then. Is it – is there any chance it’s mine?”

One corner of her mouth twists up, but the smile holds no pleasure in it. “If I say it’s yours, you’ll think I’m lying to manipulate you and it’s not. If I say it’s not, you’ll think I’m lying to keep you from the child and it is. You always have liked to make it so there’s no way I can win.”

“Whatever you say, I’ll believe it,” he offers, and to his surprise the words are completely genuine. Part of it’s that in his heart he can’t believe she would lie about such a thing to him, even though he knows rationally that’s naïve – she’s more than capable of lying to him about anything if it serves her purpose. But part of it’s also that if she says it’s not his, it will hurt so greatly he won’t be able to risk ever thinking it might be again, and if she says it is, he won’t be able to bring himself to ever doubt it no matter what anyone else says. He can’t live with uncertainty. He never could.

Her eyebrows climb at the note of conviction in his voice. “Well, then,” she says, and her voice is unexpectedly soft and small, her smile tremulous. “If the midwives I’ve talked to are at all competent, then it’s yours.” She gives a half-shrug, trying to act like it doesn’t matter at all.

“Mine?” His voice is rough, and it breaks on the word.

Another shrug, and it’s even more obvious any self-possession she’s showing is a façade, and that the façade is cracking. The words tumble out of her. “I was careful, you know. I was always so careful. I took rue tea, I took other precautions, and I took care of any consequences before they could take hold. But when everything started happening so quickly last year, preventative teas were the last thing on my mind, and it’s not like I planned to do anything that required them. Then after it happened, I was moving around so quickly, place to place, and it never crossed my mind. I didn’t realise until a couple of months ago.”

He just stares at her, not sure what to say. There’s nothing but blank shock in his mind, and he knows he must look foolish, gaping at her like this.

It’s a long minute until she continues, and now she sounds defensive, probably reacting to his somewhat-terrified silence. “I don’t – I don’t expect anything from you, Athos. In fact, I don’t want anything. That’s why I wasn’t planning to tell you, but you asked, and I didn’t want to lie to you, not after – well. Not after all the times I’ve lied to you in the past. I owe you the truth, but that doesn’t mean the truth _changes_ anything in this case. It’s my problem, and I’ll deal with it.”

So perhaps he was right when he thought giving him the Cardinal’s secrets were a way to begin seeking his forgiveness, just as he has been trying to seek hers, however poorly, but he’s so wholly distracted he can’t even begin to process that now. He puts that thought away to deal with later, because there’s a more urgent question to ask.

“Deal with it?” he croaks, finding his words again. “Do you mean -”

She actually laughs at that one, though there’s not much mirth in it. “Athos, it would have been risky to deal with it that way _months_ ago, by now it’d be barely short of suicide. Like I said, by the time I found out, it was already quite late.” 

“But you wish you could get rid of the babe? You don’t want it?” Each question tears and hurts, though he’s not sure why. It makes sense. Even as he clings to keepsakes of what they were to each other, he almost hates those reminders at times, as if they’re taunting him with what he’s lost. How much worse must it be for her to have a child as well as the scarred line on her throat reminding her of what he did?

“No,” she says, and she almost looks surprised by her own words. “No, I want it. I did from the moment I realised it was yours. I want it more than I’ve wanted anything for a very long time. If I didn’t, I would have damned the risk and taken a double dose.”

“So you’re keeping it. Not giving it away, or – or anything like that.” _From the moment I realised it was yours._ The implications send him dizzy, wild hopes rising in him, foolish hopes, _tempting_ hopes.

“It won’t be left at the crossroads, no,” she says, rolling her eyes. She hesitates, then says, “I’m planning to raise the child in England. I can speak the language well, and no one knows me there -”

“What about me?” Athos asks, soaring hopes abruptly plummeting.

“What about you?”

“I’m the father,” he says, and the words are simultaneously the most frightening and incredible in the world, and God, he’s not at all prepared for this. _A woman I care for greatly is having my child_ , Aramis had said, eyes full of overwhelming amazement and agony and terror and hope, and now Athos can understand those feelings exactly, or possibly even better than Aramis does, because this is his _wife_ and he more than just _cares_ for her.

“Yes,” she bites out, “And I’m the mother. It – it may not deserve me, but it has me, and it’ll need me. I’m not giving this child up to anyone, not even you, no matter what _rights_ you think you have as a result of some impulsive, ill-advised -”

“Giving it up?” he repeats, lost, and then he understands. “No, I don’t – you think I’d try and take it from you? Really?”

She relaxes slightly, although she’s still watching him warily. “I don’t always know what you’ll do, Athos. When you’re being righteous, you can surprise me with your ruthlessness.” She doesn’t lift her chin to emphasise her covered neck, because she doesn’t need to – the unseen shadow of that tree and its dangling noose splits the room in two. She clears her throat and adds, “Don’t tell me you’re not thinking your child deserves better than to be raised by a liar, a thief, a -” 

“A drunk?” Athos asks dryly. He hadn’t been thinking that the child deserved better than her, but he realises from the expression on her face and the way she bites at her lip, she has been. He doesn’t know what to say to that. No, an assassin probably isn’t the ideal person to raise a child. A memory sparks in his befuddled mind. “A new life. You mentioned wanting a new life. This is why?”

“No, I wanted it before I knew of this.” She looks away from him, still biting her lip. “I want a life without lying, without stealing, without killing. I want to remember what it’s like to wake up in the morning and look forward to the day. This child’s an added incentive to try and change, I’ll admit, but it also means I’m working with some time constraints.”

“But you’re still… working. Still killing.” He barely suppresses the sudden urge to shake her, scold her, force her to listen, fury rising within him. She must be mad, running about killing people with a child inside her, _his_ child inside her. The wave of protectiveness and anger that goes through him is even stronger than usual.

“That’s done now.”

“But you _were_ -”

“Do you want me to admit I shouldn’t have fallen back into that line of work? I’m well aware, Athos,” she snaps, reading the fury in his expression, “That’s why I’m here to speak with you, why I’m trying to make things right. None of the men I killed were shining examples of humanity, but I shouldn’t have done it regardless. I _know_.”

He realises with a flicker of concern for his own soul that none of his anger was due to the immorality of murder, the way she seems to think – all of it came from worry about her safety. “Why do it in the first place?” It comes out almost plaintive.

“Why d’you think? Money,” she says, as if it’s obvious. “To get to England, to start a new life, and to raise this child.”

England, again. “You shouldn’t be doing any of that. You should have come to me. You don’t think I’ll support you? You can stay in Paris -”

“And what, raise the child with you? Around you? No.”

It feels like a blow. “It’s my child as well. You spat fire of the idea of me taking it from you, but you’ll take it from me and call that right?”

“Athos, half a year ago you came very close to spitting me on the point your sword.”

She can’t seriously be claiming he shouldn’t be around a child, _their_ child. In some ways he agrees that he’s hardly an ideal parental figure, but it’s not like she’s blameless in what’s passed between them, and the hypocrisy angers him. “You tried to have me shot,” he points out furiously. “My God, and that’s the least of what you’ve -”

“ _Exactly_ ,” she says, still calm compared to him, and he shuts up to listen. “I’m not saying you’re too dangerous to be near a child. I’m saying the two of us – the combination of us, the things we drive each other to do, the extremes we’ll go to – no child should grow up with that.” She looks directly at him, and her gaze is clear and sad. “I don’t think there’s anyone else in the world you would have chosen to hang from the branch of a tree without a trial. And I know there’s no one else I would have spent half a decade seeking bloody revenge on. The way we feel about each other drives us to cruelty more often than kindness.”

“The way we feel about each other…”

“You know exactly what I mean, Athos,” she says. “Don’t play the fool.”

He doesn’t play the fool, but he does play dumb. He doesn’t know what to say to that. Despite her claim, he doesn’t really know what she means, if she’s talking about the hatred and anger they claim or what lies under it. She must see that confusion in his face, because she sighs and continues.

“You know, you’re the only person in the world I’ve ever loved?” The question, raw and painful, seems to hang in the air between them, wrenched from the heart, so impossibly and obviously true that Athos’s breath catches. “But that’s twisted, now, and here’s this instead. If there’s anyone else I’m capable of really loving, it would be this child, part you and part me. Maybe it’ll even love me as well. I hope so. And I think maybe that’s what I need.”

“And I don’t have a place in that,” he says, and he can hear his voice break as he says it, and all the loneliness and grief in him pours through the cracks and into the silence his words creates.

It’s a long pause before she responds, voice cautious. “To tell the truth, I didn’t think you’d want one. I thought you’d want me miles away, child or no child. I suppose I underestimated your desire to be a father.”

“My desire to be a _father_?” He lets out a curse without meaning to, and then he’s striding across the room and pressing her to the wall with scant regard for her shocked expression, already slanting his mouth over hers in a furious, desperate kiss. She gasps up against him, trapped there, eyes sliding closed, fingers already curling into his neck, his hair. His blood boils and surges with heat and need and stupidity, and the curves her body are strange and different but the taste of her is unchanged. The knowledge his child growing within her only strengthens that bone-deep, savage possessiveness he’s never been quite able to cut out of himself, that core certainty that whatever else she is, she is _his_.

When he pulls back, her breathing is ragged, and she stumbles a little like she’s uncertain of her balance, but he holds her steady. “It’s not about the child,” he says, faces only an inch apart, anguished gaze burning into hers. Then he amends, “It’s not _only_ about the child.”

“You wanted me out of Paris desperately enough to try and pay me before you found out about this,” she points out, clearly trying to regain her composure. Her face is flushed, though, and her hair’s a mess from his hands, and no matter how hard she swallows whatever she’s feeling she can’t seem to bury it entirely.

Well, yes, he wanted her out of Paris, of course he did. Because he thought she didn’t want him, that she was only here to prove herself a monster and murderer again, that anything else was just a taunt. He thought she’d drive them towards another inevitable clash and force him into another impossible choice. But now he finds she wants to raise his child, and that she meant it when she spoke of starting a new life, and she tells him he’s the only person she’s ever loved – and, what, is he supposed to be unaffected by that? Is he supposed to not want any part of this dream she lays out before him so clearly?

But he wants that dream so _violently_ , so desperately he could stab and tear and claw his way towards it, and the shock of realising that makes him suddenly understand what she means. He’s never been able to restrain himself when it comes to her, never been able to hold back. She shreds his sanity, his serenity, and his self-control, and from the look of it, he does the same to her. They’ve damaged each other so much – how can they risk damaging a child as well?

The core of it is that he can’t ever trust her again, and he can’t trust himself when he’s around her. If they remain together someday there will be another betrayal, whether real or perceived – another dead body on the floor, another lie uncovered, another knife in the dark – and he can’t predict what it will be any more than he can predict his response to it.

_The way you can prove you care for her is to keep her safe. The child as well. Everything else is pure selfishness._ His own words. But how can he keep them safe if they’re an ocean away? How can he do anything? If it’s what she wants, though – he owes her that. Doesn’t he owe her that? After everything he’s done to her, everything he’s driven her to, if there’s any way he can assist her in finding a quiet and happy life for herself he thinks he should do it without protest. She came here to see him to atone for her lies by giving him truth, to try and fix her mistakes, to try and make amends. How can he do any less?

“You should take the money,” he says, pushing himself back from her and half-turning away, trying to control his expression – he knows it’s twisting to something like grief. “Let me at least do that, if you’re leaving.” Leaving, heavy with his child – he won’t even know if she survives the birth, if it does. He won’t know if he has a son or daughter, what name his wife gives it (or goes by herself, for that matter), where they’ll be. He won’t know anything.

“The work I was here for was very well paid,” she says. She adds no weight or emphasis to the word ‘work’, so that it would be almost impossible to believe she was talking of cold-blooded murder for hire if he didn’t know it. “In fact, like I said, I came here to talk about that, not try and get coin from you, Athos. I don’t need your money.”

No, apparently she needs nothing from him. “Take it anyway,” he says, through numb lips. “Please.” He hesitates, then makes a suggestion that he knows will be torture, but still better than nothing. “Maybe – if you sent me a message, when you’re settled – maybe I could keep sending coin, to help out. However much you have, it can’t last forever. And in return – it wouldn’t have to be often – but if you – short letters, maybe, just telling me -” He lapses into silence, because it’s too hard to continue.

She looks at him for a long moment. “I could do that,” she says softly. Then she clears her throat, straightening and pulling the cloak more completely around her again, like she’s trying to return to her earlier cool distance. “Assuming I’m not under arrest after I tell you who I’ve been working for, anyway.”

X_X_X_X_X

D’Artagnan politely holds the door for Treville, then enters after him and closes it, sealing the room off from the rest of the tavern.

“The Queen could deliver at any moment, and I should be keeping His Majesty company until then,” Treville tells Athos, face impassive but eyes alight with concern. “What’s so urgent you got me down here for it?”

“That would be me,” Milady says brightly, stepping in from the little anteroom. Porthos and Aramis arrived earlier and were well-aware she was there, so they don’t react at all, but d’Artagnan flinches in surprise and casts a glance at Athos.

Treville stares at her for a moment, hard-eyed and suspicious, then switches his gaze to Athos. “You found her?”

“I found him, actually.” Once again, she’s swathed in that big cloak, despite the heat that’s already rising from the streets outside. It can’t be comfortable, or good for the babe, and Athos finds himself worrying about that. He never asked how she’s doing, or how she feels, or if the baby seems healthy, and somehow it feels like overstepping to ask now. She fixes the cloak a little more securely around her, as he watches, but whether that’s in response to his stare or those of his friends is anyone’s guess. Like her chokers, once you know what’s beneath, the folds of the cloak are hypnotic. Not that she ever needed that to keep his gaze fixed on her.

“She has information you need to know,” Athos says woodenly, tearing his eyes away from her. “She’s been working for Rochefort.”

Aramis gives an interested little “hmm”, Porthos rubs his beard thoughtfully, Treville’s eyebrows snap together, and d’Artagnan throws her a poisonous look. “Of _course_ she has,” he says sourly. “A leopard can’t change its spots, after all.”

“I could have just left town, Musketeer,” Milady points out. “I didn’t have to come to you people at all.”

“The last time you came to us with information, we all nearly died,” Aramis notes.

“An exaggeration,” she scoffs. “I came _much_ closer to dying in that mess than you did. Anyway, why are we quibbling about ancient history? You need information, I have it, and I’m willing to give it to you.”

“At what price?” d’Artagnan asks cynically. 

“Imagining Rochefort’s expression when you lot arrest him is payment enough.” She smiles beatifically back at d’Artagnan’s dark, distrustful scowl. “Although if you seize his assets, I’d quite like to receive the balance of what he owes me. And there was a bonus he kept implying he’d -”

“A bonus for what?” Treville breaks in, annoyed with this digression. “Have you been serving him in the same capacity as you served the Cardinal?”

Athos replies, mostly to keep them on topic. “Rochefort’s behind the deaths of the Duc, the Chancellor, and the Spanish ambassador. She carried them out on his orders.”

D’Artagnan makes a noise of disgust, but it’s drowned out by Porthos saying with great satisfaction, “ _Knew_ it wasn’t natural causes.” They all look at him and he coughs, a little sheepish. “Uh… I mean…. Terrible shame. May they rest in peace, and so on.”

Milady snorts. If she feels guilty for the men’s deaths – and Athos thinks that she does, judging by how blank her face was when she relayed this to him last night, and the yearning in her voice when she spoke of a life without killing – she doesn’t let it show. “Yes, you seem distraught. Can we get to the real issues here?”

“And what are the real issues, if you consider the dead bodies piling up to be so unimportant?” Treville asks.

She smirks. “Well. Rochefort is in love with Her Majesty, he’s working as a spy for the Spanish, and at some point he’s planning to help them take control of France.”

They all gape at her, except for Athos, who’s already heard this. A couple even let out shocked curses. Even when he first heard it, Athos was a little too numb from repeated surprises by that point in their discussion to give this news the shocked response it deserves. Instead his reaction had been simply to pull an unopened bottle of wine from a cupboard. Hearing it again, he feels the same desire.

“If the Queen’s blessed with a son and the King’s lost in a tragic accident, she’s the only obvious regent now the Cardinal’s dead,” she continues relentlessly. “With Rochefort as her main advisor, if he can climb high enough by then, of course, which is what all these other little misadventures are intended to help accomplish. I believe the idea is to persuade Her Majesty to call in her brother to secure the throne after His Majesty’s death – bringing in his soldiers to help, of course, and effectively annexing France.”

“What if the Queen has a daughter?” Porthos asks reasonably, the quickest to get over his astonishment.

“Then this plan will take rather longer,” Milady says dryly. “But otherwise, I imagine the essentials will remain the same.”

“He’s in love with Her Majesty?” Aramis asks incredulously, apparently stuck on that point.

“Yes. There’s a prostitute I know who can fill in the details, if you’re curious, but frankly it’s all a bit nauseating. He seems to think they share a forbidden love, and the King’s death will allow them to finally consummate it.” She tilts her head slightly, narrowing her eyes. “I’ve never had much to do with the Queen, apart from that one time, but I somehow doubt she sees it the same.”

“A Spanish spy,” Treville says thoughtfully. “His great escape was just a release, then. And de Foix?”

“To gain our trust and the King’s favour, I think,” Athos says. “It was all a bit convenient, wasn’t it?

“Good God.” Treville shakes his head. “And Perales? Why kill him?”

“A difference of opinion, from what I can tell,” Milady says. “Rochefort’s methods of dealing with interpersonal conflict seem to be disproportionately lethal.”

“Your methods, you mean,” d’Artagnan says flatly. His sharp eyes examine Milady’s shrouded figure, clearly looking for signs of the pregnancy Aramis and Porthos told them about, but he gives up in moments with a sort of facial shrug – it’s a very thick cloak. Of course, that’s probably enough of a give-away, really. Athos doesn’t try to catch his gaze. “Why should we trust anything you have to say?”

“Why would I say it if it wasn’t true?”

“I don’t know, the same reason you did last time?” d’Artagnan looks at her with his lip curled. “To kill Athos? To destroy the Musketeers? To manipulate us into helping carry out your latest foul little scheme?”

“I’m sorry, there’s only so much self-righteousness I can take from someone who tried to lie, cheat, and – quite frankly – _seduce_ their way into my confidence,” she drawls. “Not that you were very good at it. Listen, you have the information. What you do with it is up to you – ignore it, investigate it, write it down in your diaries. I don’t care. I have a ship to England to catch.”

“England?” Porthos raises his eyebrows.

“No,” Treville says.

“I’m sorry?”

“No.” Treville’s face may as well be carved from stone. “You’re staying here while we look into this. We may need your help. You have Rochefort’s trust, and we don’t. If you require payment -”

“Is this not giving you déjà vu? We’ve had this discussion before,” she reminds him. “Six months ago, if you recall. You offered to pay me a not insignificant sum of money to unearth secrets about the Cardinal, I pretended to be extremely reluctant, we broke into the Louvre – surely you have a better survival instinct than this.”

“I hate to agree with her,” d’Artagnan says, “But I agree with her.”

“This time is different,” Treville says, ignoring the many other sets of incredulous eyes focused on him to meet Milady’s. “D’you know how I know that? Because last time, Athos swore blind we couldn’t and shouldn’t trust you, and he was right. But this time, he hasn’t said a word except to get us here. I don’t trust you, but I trust him, and if there’s a reason he’s convinced of your good intent then I won’t question it.”

_Convinced_ is perhaps too strong a word, Athos wants to say, but instead he keeps his mouth shut. At this point, if his wife wanted to destroy him, she has far more efficient ways of doing it than this. Hell, she already has come close to destroying him. There’s no guarantee this isn’t another excessively complicated ploy, since her schemes have always left him floundering in confusion and presumably always will, but the information she’s given them – it _fits_. It makes sense.

Of course, that was true last time, as well.


	5. Chapter 5

Treville convinces her to remain – or, well, it’s Treville’s words, but Athos’s stare. The way he looks at her is uncomfortably similar to a drowning man who’s spotted an approaching boat, only to realise that it’s a Spanish galley. She feels unaccountably guilty, like she’s betrayed him by telling him the truth, and like she’s abandoning him by planning to seek out a new life in England for her and for their child. She’s doing the right thing, of course she is, but she’s unused to doing the right thing and she’s unsure if it’s supposed to feel like a heavy lead weight on your chest.

And so she’s decided not to abandon him immediately, despite what she’d said. It would be smarter to leave as soon as possible, but she can wait a couple of days to see if their little plan to catch out Rochefort works. It places her in little danger, after all, and they might need her information. 

Rochefort doesn’t know that they know anything, so they have time, but they want to try and get evidence before she vanishes and he starts getting suspicious. To that end, the plan is for Porthos and Aramis to gather other possible witnesses against Rochefort, including the woman Milady spoke to at the brothel, and a few Red Guards she’s named who were in some way involved with the assassinations or framings. Tonight, Athos and d’Artagnan will also try and search Rochefort’s offices at the Louvre (she hadn’t bothered to offer her assistance, aware that d’Artagnan would shoot the suggestion down for reasons of distrust while Athos would contrast protectiveness and suspicion and reach the same conclusion). Between both those avenues, they should get enough proof for the King to order Rochefort’s arrest, at the very least.

Athos argued strongly for Treville to be guarded by a troop of Musketeers at all times, since if Rochefort realises their general misgivings have turned into specific accusations, he’ll probably go for Treville first. But although Athos was insistent, Treville proved to be even more resistant to the idea, and instead the other Musketeers have been sent to shut down the tavern that’s operating as a Spanish spy-nest and locate any related agents they can. With so many investigating, it might even produce some tangible evidence, a missive from Rochefort or something.

Of course, once Treville’s left, the talk turns from Rochefort to other things. The Inseparables aren’t known for either their tact or subtlety. She supposes she should be grateful they didn’t fill Treville in on the situation as well, because apparently her child is a matter for public discussion and consideration.

“Are we all just gonna ignore the elephant in the room?” Porthos wants to know.

“I know you Musketeers don’t have much experience with expectant mothers, but we don’t really appreciate being called elephantine,” she tells him dryly.

“What are you going to do with the child?” D’Artagnan’s gaze is hard with disbelief and suspicion.

“I was planning to sacrifice it to Satan, but I couldn’t find French translations of the unholy invocations, and my Latin’s appalling.” She crosses her arms, shaking her head in disbelief at his dimness, and spells out the obvious because Musketeers seem to require that. “I thought I’d raise it, imbecile. Maybe name it. Naming children seems to be in fashion these days. But I must admit, I fail to see how it’s any of your business.”

“How are you feeling?” Aramis asks, with all the earnestness her midwife shows. It’s even less welcome from him, though.

She’s Milady de Winter, feared assassin, spy, thief, master manipulator. She’s a woman of mystery who disappears into the shadows with ease and produces knives from hidden pockets and seduces men with her every movement. There’s a dignity to her distance, her inscrutability, her unpredictability; there’s an edge to her that forces men who would patronise another woman to treat her as an equal or even a threat when she desires it. 

Milady de Winter is darkness, vengefulness, and danger. And there is no space in the woman they know her as for… this. Any of this. That woman doesn’t talk about swollen ankles and hands, or nausea, or feeling slightly unsteady on her feet, or having difficulty sleeping, or concerns about giving birth. And she certainly would never open up about the constant fear caused by the babe not kicking, the cold certainty that creeps over her that she’s already managed to hurt it somehow when she thinks on it for too long. The thick cloak conceals a physical vulnerability from potential enemies, sure, but it also conceals an emotional one and Milady hates that it’s been bared before these idiots.

“I’m feeling like I’m not being paid enough for this,” she drawls to Aramis. “For anything else, please refer to my earlier comment about this being none of your concern.”

“What are you going to call it?” he asks brightly, ignoring her, but she can see from the quirk of his lips that he’s persisting with these inane questions simply to annoy her. “Thought of any names?”

She hasn’t, since she doesn’t want to get any more attached than she already has – her life has not been one that makes her err on the side of optimism, and even as she builds her future around the tiny being inside her, she is almost terrified at the thought of truly giving it form in her imagination. “Mordaunt, maybe, if it’s a boy,” she says, purely to shut up Aramis, and he gives her an incredulous look she meets with an innocent one of her own. “What, do you not like it?”

“No, no, it’s perfectly fine. A lovely name. Who doesn’t want their child to grow up to kill King Arthur, after all?”

“Who indeed.” Her tone is perfectly dismissive, and Aramis subsides finally, perhaps remembering how she reacted the last time he continued questioning her after she was done with the conversation.

“So… England, huh?” Porthos says, after a long silence. He studies her for a moment, but then glances at Athos in question, and she realises that one of the Inseparables at least knows that her current state might be very much Athos’s concern.

“Yes. England.” Her child growing up English – an odd thought, every time she thinks it. Will it be rosy-cheeked, fond of rain, unable to bear real taste in food, and speak French with that terrible English accent? Surely not. It will still be her blood, after all, hers and Athos. A heritage that should make the child entirely French, wherever it grows up, as well as inclined to sarcasm, dangerous with a variety of weaponry, excessively passionate, and perhaps too clever for its own good.

None of them seem to know what to say to this flat agreement. Porthos just nods. Athos’s gaze continues to burn her.

X_X_X_X_X

Athos escorts her back to the lodging she’s staying at, which is both gentlemanly and wholly unnecessary. Unless, of course, he’s doing it for an ulterior motive – to find out where she’s staying, to ensure she doesn’t plan to leave while Treville still wants her here, or perhaps to talk further about subjects she would rather abandon forever.

She cannot raise a child with a man who’ll watch with narrowed eyes and wait with bated breath for her to make any mistake, however small – she cannot raise a child with a man who’ll raise a sword against her at the slightest indication she might be slipping into her old ways and planning another betrayal. She can’t change to who she wants to be when to him, she’ll always be frozen in amber as the woman who lied, the woman who can’t be trusted, the woman who needs to be brought to justice. Perhaps she is that woman, now, but she wasn’t back when he corralled her into being it, back when he seared his own views of her nature into her with rope-burn and heartbreak. If she wants to be something other than that, it will have to be elsewhere, it will have to be without him. Anything else is too dangerous. It might be worth the risk if there were no child, but there is a child, and now if she angers him he might not threaten her with death or arrest, he might take that child from her. 

But. She wishes for it, so fiercely, so painfully it’s hard to hold back from. They might not be in a good place right now, precisely, but at least they’re no longer in the terrible place they were before – no blades to the throat, no deliberate cruelties spat at the other, no dark threats.

“Should I not have told you?” she asks softly.

“Of course you’re already wishing you’d lied,” he says curtly, and then seems to regret it almost instantly, nearly cutting himself off with a sigh. “No, I – I would rather know. I’d always rather know the truth.”

“That’s more of a lie than anything I’ve ever said to you.” The words are harsh, but her tone is just sad. Since the moment Thomas d’Athos breathed his last, Athos stopped wanting truth from her, and preferred to see lies everywhere. “And I’m not sure if telling you the truth served any purpose here.”

“Did you really think I’d try and take the child from you? That I’d force you to stay here and have it, and then – what, rip it out of your arms? Send you away, to another country, or imprisonment, or even execution?” Clearly, it’s been bothering him.

“If I thought it was _likely_ you’d do that, I would never have come anywhere near you again.” The possibility had crossed her mind, and it had concerned her, even frightened her, but she hadn’t really believed he would do that, not after his relatively-warm response to seeing her again. But that’s Athos when he’s calm – she’s also seen him blind with fury, grief and betrayal, and there were no lengths he wouldn’t go to then.

He wheels on her suddenly, misery in his eyes, and she lets him pull her close, reaching up to trace his face with her gloved hand as he stares at her helplessly. “I wish -”

“I know,” she says softly. She wishes things were different as well. She feels the urge to stay in Paris, to stay with him, try to salvage some of what they had, try to rebuild some of what they used to be. Try to create something new and stronger. Try to give this child the family they once could have been.

“I miss the locket,” he confides, voice low, twisting it in his hand, weighing it like merchants weigh gold. She wonders if he finds it fool’s gold or true, if it’s yet another counterfeit to him, if he would like to take it from her neck and have it back. Perhaps, when she goes, she should leave the locket, just as last time she took it – that would be nicely symmetrical, and she won’t need a metal chain to remember him. She didn’t need it last time, either, but she took it – why? To send a message, she supposes. “I wear the choker around my arm, but I miss the weight of the chain. I miss being able to hold it in my hand when I think.”

Fitting, that she should give a choker to the man who choked the life from her, or at least ordered it done: fitting, that she should wear a chain to symbolise the only man she’s ever felt bound to. And fitting that their symbol is forget-me-nots: flowers that spread wildly and are difficult to root out, flowers which seemingly die in winter but somehow always appear again in summer, flowers that are only beautiful sometimes but are always there. It’s also ironic – forget-me-nots are grown to grieve lost loved ones, but he’s the one who killed her; forget-me-nots are worn to promise fidelity, but she’s known for her faithlessness. Or perhaps not so ironic, since grief and constancy are in some strange ways the mainstays of their marriage.

He sways forward very slightly, until his forehead is pressed to hers, and she feels the shock of the touch down to her toes. She gives a sharp, ragged little inhale. The shudder of it through her body is matched by his: the two of them are so close that every movement belongs to them both.

“I should go,” he says, after a long minute.

“Yes.”

“This isn’t good for the child.” He doesn’t specify if he means upsetting her, or just being around her. With a shuddering sigh, he pulls back from her, their foreheads no longer pressed together, their breaths no longer shared, the blue of his eyes no longer the only thing she can see. Moving back should reduce his presence, but the afterimage of him is always there when she blinks her eyes. Sometimes she wonders if he’s just seared into her vision by now, the same way he’s burnt into her heart and mind and soul.

“No. Perhaps not.” She watches him go, holding back tears. He pauses twice as he leaves, but he doesn’t look around, and by the time he’s gone, her vision is blurred. It’s the babe, she tells herself, making her moodier than normal – nothing more than that. Certainly not the tearing, ripping feeling in her chest. He’s right that this isn’t good for the child, this stress and heartbreak and want and misery, and if it’s not good for it while it’s within her it’ll hardly benefit it after. But it’s hard. It’s so very hard.

She should sense it earlier, but she’s so distracted by thoughts of Athos that her first awareness the something is wrong is the prick of a knife digging into the side of her ribs. She goes stock still immediately, every nerve and sinew tightening in sudden panic. She tilts her head to the side to view her attacker, trying to come up with a plan.

It’s Rochefort, of course, and the knife in his hand goes entirely unnoticed by the rest of the street, buried as it is in the folds of her cloak. It’s in his far hand, and he lets the arm closest to her rest lightly on her shoulder like a husband might gently guide his lady wife. Only she can feel the way his fingers dig into her arm, just like the knife digs into her side. “Start walking, Milady de Winter,” he mutters, a blank smile fixed on his face. “You wouldn’t want to force me to do anything too extreme, would you?”

She walks. He’s alone, she notes, but he’s quick and strong, and his knife is much closer than any of hers. A thrust of a few inches and she’d gasp her way to a slow death, blood bubbling out of her mouth, lungs useless. She forces her mind to work – he’s alone, and that means either he considers her a threat he can easily deal with without assistance, or that he’s worried about what any helpers might hear. The second’s more likely, she thinks, and that means he knows that she has information against him, whichever piece of information it is.

“I’ve heard you’ve been digging into my affairs,” he drawls, still deceptively calm. “And here I find you talking to a Musketeer, one of the renowned Inseparables, even. _More_ than talking, judging by what I saw. What _am_ I to make of this, Milady?”

She runs quickly through dozens of possible responses, none of which are likely to be convincing or helpful. He won’t believe her if she claims loyalty to him, or that Athos is nothing to her, or that she knows nothing incriminating, and with any of those he’s more likely to kill her than question her further. Eventually, she settles on bluntness. “If you kill me, you’ll never know what I’ve told him, will you? I imagine that would be unnerving.”

The knife digs in harder, piercing through the cloak, piercing through her skin. It’s a shallow wound, but the shock of pain chills her, and the threat implied chills her more. “Does this really seem like a position from which to attempt threats?”

Well, no. But it’s that or pleas, and frankly he doesn’t seem the merciful type. “Now, what _do_ I know? What did I tell them? And in what specific way were you careless enough that I was able to find out in the first place? All important questions, my lord. If I were you, I’d want to know the answers.”

It’s only a moment of hesitation, but it’s enough that she relaxes slightly, even with the knife at her side. She won’t die immediately. “Keep walking,” is all he says, so she does.

X_X_X_X_X

He ties her and leaves her guarded by Red Guards, but he orders them to remain outside of the room she’s in and not to listen to a word she says, and she recognises that as the important part. The Red Guards wouldn’t turn on him because he apparently fantasises about the Queen, even if some of those fantasies are somewhat treasonous – she suspects they’ve all said worse in bed before. So it has to be something else, and it’s pretty clear what. While the Guards have backed the Cardinal in all sorts of questionable activities, however amoral they may be, they’re still Frenchmen, and they despise the Spanish. If they knew Rochefort was a Spanish spy, they might desert him.

Of course, even if she could tell them, they’d be unlikely to believe her, and even if they believed her they might not turn on him, and even if they turned on him it wouldn’t be instantaneously, so that helps her get free not at all, but it does give her information. By doing this, he’s given her a strong hint about what he thinks she knows – that he’s a Spanish spy, but possibly only that, not the rest. Perhaps when she was watching the place one of the other Spanish agents in Paris noticed her, perhaps the bartender did, perhaps Rochefort even realised it himself. But the prostitute seemed too bright to talk, so Rochefort is probably unaware she knows about his obsession with Her Majesty. He might also think all she knows about his overarching plans is the systematic killing of the Ministers she’s been helping with, and she can probably convince him Athos knows nothing about that, since given her part in it, it’s quite believable she’d keep it quiet. It’s best if he continues to think all the Musketeers know is that he may be a Spanish spy – that’s quite enough information to see him executed, after all, even without all the rest, but it will mean he thinks his specific plans are still a mystery to them.

She doubts Rochefort would leave her here at all, except that even in this damp little basement, she can hear the sounds of a city in celebration. The Queen’s delivered. From the sheer noise, she thinks it must be a son. For one of the King’s closest confidantes not to show his face on such a day would be very suspicious.

It gives her a few hours of time, but to her fury, there seems to be nothing she can do with them. She’s tied very well, and they took her knives, and the Red Guards watch her closely. The initial search had been easily thorough enough for them to notice she’s with child, so when Rochefort comes back he’ll know that as well, and she goes cold with horror when she thinks what he might do with that knowledge, the new leverage this gives him. Still, perhaps it will help her somehow. The default assumption men make when dealing with women is that they are soft and easily swayed by emotion, and she’s used that particular underestimation to her advantage regularly in the past, so this might give her even more of an advantage. She could have slit Aramis’s throat due to his notion the child inside her had magically turned her sweet and maternal, perhaps she can slit Rochefort’s instead.

“Here is what you are going to do,” he says to her when he returns. His tone is almost pleasant. “Firstly, you’re going to tell me everything you told that idiot Musketeer. Then, you’re going to write him a letter.”

If she were a different person, she’d probably be spitting defiance, swearing she’s not going to tell him a thing. Instead, she studies his face and considers her options. There’s no point asking him ‘or what’, not when he’s got a blade and she’s tied to a chair. If she pushes, she’s sure he can come up with even worse things than simply killing her. Telling him nothing is not an option, unless she wants to lose eyes or limbs or her life, not unless she wants him to hurt her. Or perhaps even hurt the child inside her – she doubts he’d be above threatening her with pennyroyal or something similar, if it occurred to him, because he’ll assume she’d do almost anything to protect the child inside her even if she can be careless with her own wellbeing (and the worst of it is, he’s not entirely wrong). But just telling him everything is also not an option, because then he has no reason _not_ to kill her. Unless…

Oh, Athos is not going to appreciate this at all.

“Of course,” she says smoothly. Rochefort’s eyebrows knit, surprised at her easy capitulation, and he waits for the catch he must know is coming. “I have no problem telling you whatever you need to know. So long as you realise that if you kill me after that, you’re throwing away your greatest bargaining chip.”

“My greatest… bargaining chip,” Rochefort repeats slowly, clearly unused to captives who confidently state their worth. “How _helpful_ of you to fill me in.”

“Well, I don’t care if you’re brought low or raised up,” she says reasonably. “You must have noticed that morality is hardly my specialty, what with all the murders I’ve done in your name. I believe in survival above everything. I’ve been playing you and Athos both, or hadn’t that occurred to you?”

He tilts his head slightly to the side, and then says, “Go on,” somewhat sceptically.

“Athos and I share some acquaintance,” she says. “We have for… quite some time.” He registers the intonation, gaze lowering for a moment, lips pursing in realisation. She wonders what the Cardinal’s files say about her and Athos. Probably nothing at all, come to think of it. “So when he offered me livres for a few facts, I gave them to him. Only titbits, of course – no point in risking lucrative employment if the other offer’s not as good, and playing his adoring woman can be _exhausting_. He’s been looking into you since you appeared, you know.”

“I suspected something of the sort,” he says, unblinking stare fixed upon her face.

In fact, he probably suspected something of the sort about Treville, rather than Athos. But it’s to her advantage if he focuses on the only person he’s likely to believe will care if she lives or dies. It was Athos, after all, he saw her embracing.

“So Athos is the only one who knows exactly where all the information on you is,” she says. “The only one who knows which people know what, what they have written down, and where any evidence is. What’s known about you will spread like wildflowers – you need to dig them up at the roots, not lop off the heads. You need to know what he knows, not just kill him. Assuming you even _could_ kill him.”

“That’s the purpose of the letter,” Rochefort says, because as she’s already experienced, he likes going on about his clever plans. “A man headed for an assignation should be easy enough to ambush and murder.”

“And then once again, you’ll be fighting blind, with no idea what Treville knows, what everyone knows. With no idea what information they’ve got.” She needs to be valuable enough to keep alive, but she’d like to make Athos just as indispensable in his eyes. While there’s always the chance of any unlucky blow or shot killing him, in general abduction attempts are much less likely to succeed than straight-up assassinations.

He shrugs, brushing off her logic like an irritating fly. “So I’ll interrogate him before his death. That’s simple enough.”

“Of course, but we both know no threat of physical harm would ever persuade Athos to betray France, don’t we?” She smiles up at him, a little smug. “His honour is legendary, as is his loyalty to King and country. The threat of physical harm to his woman and her unborn child, though… even a man as honourable as Athos might be unable to resist that.”

Of course, Athos would sacrifice her in a second for his duty, unborn child or no. She knows that well enough. But Rochefort has only a little acquaintance with Athos, and she can see he’s considering what she said, the sense of it registering. He needs leverage. A man as reserved as Athos embracing a woman on the street, holding her like she’s unimaginably precious, looking at her like nothing else in the world exists – well, that seems like a gift in terms of hostages. That she’s pregnant only makes it better.

In the end, he dictates the short letter to her. He has an earlier missive of hers – the response to when he first offered her employment – so she can’t attempt to change or distort her handwriting to warn Athos without inviting some sort of punishment. He forces her to stay exactly to the words he wants, as well, so she can’t sneak in any kind of code. She’ll simply have to hope that the fact she’s sending him a message instead of appearing unexpectedly like normal clues him in. The note’s short, vague, slightly impersonal, and asks him to go to a remote location and bring no one else with him – he’ll have to at least consider that it could be a forgery or written under duress. He’ll be prepared. He’ll bring someone.

Or at least that’s what she assumes, until Rochefort yanks the locket up and over her head. “To prove the note’s truly from you.”

Well, that’s the least of what it’ll do. With what that locket’s meant to him and to them both, she has no idea how Athos will respond to the message now. Since Athos doesn’t know Rochefort saw them in the street, with him holding the locket like it was the most precious gem in the world, the addition of the locket means he’ll believe that the note must be genuine and from her, and that there must be a deeper meaning to the urgent request to see him alone. He’ll probably think it means she’s leaving Paris this moment, and rush thoughtlessly to meet her before she does.

Then again – and she’s never been grateful before for her husband’s complete lack of trust in her – he might bring all of his friends, expecting another betrayal, assuming this has all been another manipulation. If so, the attack will prove him right, but at least he’ll escape it. And even if he’s captured, his friends will know of it, and they’ll come after him – and find her as well, which is also quite high on her list of priorities.

She closes her eyes once Rochefort leaves, hoping against hope Athos isn’t stupid enough to rush off into this ambush, hoping that Rochefort’s men don’t get trigger-happy and take a shot. She doesn’t ever pray, but her lips form his name anyway.

X_X_X_X_X

She can hear Rochefort’s rage from above when the men he sent return, and the mingled relief and fear that goes through her sends her breathless. “One man, and he escaped a dozen of you? Unbelievable.”

Milady supposes he hasn’t seen the Musketeers fight much, and especially hasn’t seen her husband do so. Besides, even Red Guards in disguise are still Red Guards. She doesn’t have much time to think, though, before Rochefort’s in the room, hand tightening around her throat. The feeling of being unable to drag in a breath, of the sensitive skin of her throat constricted by iron bonds, is both familiar and unpleasant, but she manages to control her automatic panic. She stares at him, eyes wide, only able to croak out a strangled plea.

“I should squeeze the life out of you and leave your corpse for him to find,” Rochefort says distinctly.

To her surprise, just as colourful little sparks start exploding in her vision, his hand slackens. Almost delicately, he strokes back her tangled hair as she gasps in painful, delicious breaths. She was sore before – hours in this chair tied up, the many little discomforts of pregnancy becoming steadily worse, no way to even stretch or twist – but now the agony in her neck and lungs eclipses all of that.

“But then, I suppose as long as he knows your life depends on my whim, he’ll probably hesitate to act against me, won’t he?” Rochefort asks, tone contemplative. 

Unlikely, but anything that buys her time is fine by her. Time for what, though? She’s still well-tied. The guards ignore her. She doesn’t have any cards to play here. Still, her instinct is to keep trying to control the situation.

“I don’t know if it will buy you a few years, though,” she remarks, voice still croaky and sore. She’ll probably have a necklace of bruises in a few hours, assuming she lives for a few hours. “And that is what your plan requires, isn’t it? D’you really think you can keep this particular house of cards standing that long?”

Taunting a captor: almost never a wise move. On occasion, though, it can be informative, or at least entertaining.

“Good plans take time and preparation,” he tells her in a hiss. He looks like a man on the brink of committing murder, and she hopes she’s not the intended victim. “But _great_ ones can be accelerated when necessary. I think you underestimate me, Milady de Winter.”

“Perhaps. You don’t have a very good success rate against the Musketeers, though, do you?” she asks, almost idly.

“This time next week, there won’t be any King’s Musketeers. Because this time tomorrow, there won’t be any King. Not one old enough to protect them, in any case.” With a last, chilly smile, he turns and leaves her again in the dark.

It’s not the great shock he clearly intends it to be – she already knew his plans required the eventual removal of His Majesty. But this is interesting. It can’t be Spain’s preferred outcome, or even Rochefort’s, but she can understand his reasoning. With this many people aware of his true allegiance, he can’t hope to keep it under wraps for long, even if he believes Athos and the others will hold off on direct action until they know where their primary informant is now and what’s happened to her. Very soon, France will want Rochefort dead, and his usefulness to Spain will be at an end, so before that happens he needs to do something massive and game changing. Louis’s death could earn him enough gratitude from Spain to keep himself safe, and even to retain some authority, power and position in the ensuing chaos.

His Majesty needs to die before he finds out what’s going on: that makes sense. Once he’s dead, the extremely young Dauphin will be King. The Queen will be treated as regent now the Cardinal’s dead, but given the timing, there’s not a soul in France who won’t wonder if she had her husband assassinated the moment she had a son to rule through, and she’ll be forced to send off to her brother before the news gets out. So while it’s not the careful approach the Spanish King probably wanted, he’ll achieve his aim – a confused, divided France, ready to submit to Spain. And Rochefort will be the agent of it.

Of course, Rochefort’s plan is probably still useless: the Musketeers are aware of far more than he thinks, assuming they still believe everything she told them. It’s also unlikely they’ll take her disappearance as a reason to pause in investigating, since she just lured one of them to an ambush and (from their point of view) definitively proved that she is not on their side.

Right now, Athos is probably returning to his friends, to tell them that Milady de Winter has betrayed them all yet again. Unsurprising, even predictable, for her to come to them pretending to help and in fact simply be gaining their trust to later move against them. They’ll wonder if she remains in the city, and be cautious in alleyways, but they won’t look for her – Rochefort is the real threat they must deal with to protect France, and she’s just a related detail, perhaps working with Rochefort but perhaps just seeking her own selfish revenge once again. Athos will curse her, curse himself, curse God, and drink everything in sight, but that’s the kind of pastime that will have to wait until the King is safe from Rochefort’s machinations.

They might discuss whether they should seek out the child once it’s born, just in case she was telling the truth and it is Athos’s. Or perhaps they’ll even wonder if they should rescue it from her whether or not it’s his, and pass it into the care of some nice woman they know: the Musketeers believe strongly in the protection of defenceless children, she’s sure. But they won’t come for her, not right now.

Rochefort might send a message to them. He could suggest Athos give up her own life in place of hers, or request some kind of compromising information against Treville in return, or even set up some obviously farcical exchange to plan another ambush. If so, he won’t expect the bitter laughter he’ll no doubt get in response. Once he realises that Athos’s view of their relationship in no way resembles the trusting devotion she’d claimed, that Athos is more likely to believe her a willing player on Rochefort’s side than a helpless captive, Rochefort will also realise she’s useless as leverage.

She has no time. She has no plans. She has no one coming to look for her.

And Christ, what is all this doing to the child? No water, no food, slight strangulation. She imagines sitting in this room in an hour, two hours, ten, and feeling the blood start and the pain kick in, knowing what’s happening and being unable to do anything but sit there and feel every moment of it, each throb of agony and helplessness. She’s far enough along now that she doesn’t know what that will do to her, if she’ll survive losing this child. A part of her thinks that even if her body is strong enough to handle that in here, tied up, with no help coming, her mind might not be. She’s put a lot of herself into this child, not just as a tiny impossible creature inside her she’s come to feel bonded to, but as a symbol of a different kind of future, as a dream of a new life. That’s not _all_ it is to her, of course it’s not, but it’s wrapped up together in her mind.

She dryly remembers how when she took this job she thought that this time, she was going to get out before things went to shit – apparently, her ability to sense when to cut and run has not improved at all in the past six months. She could laugh, if she wasn’t so close to tears (of rage, she’s sure).

X_X_X_X_X

“Psst! Wake up, Milady.”

Someone’s shaking her gently. She suppresses a whimper as every muscle protests, then opens her eyes to see them. She squints, then says under her breath, “My God, what are you two doing here?”

“Dreadfully sorry,” Aramis says, a little breathless. He’s talking normally, so she assumes everyone else in the building is either unconscious or dead and there’s no one to alert. “Should we come back later?”

“You know how many Red Guards we had to beat up to find this place?” Porthos demands, although he can’t quite repress a bit of a smug grin.

“And you hated every moment, I’m sure,” Milady says, a little faintly. What _are_ they doing here? She hardly expected a rescue effort. 

“Bruised my fist pretty badly on the last one’s face, you know. If I’d known you were gonna be so ungrateful…”

“Are you alright?” Aramis cuts in, face alive with concern. He’s already busying himself cutting her free. “Do you feel any pain? Discomfort?”

“I’ve been tied to a chair for hours, you imbecile,” she says impatiently, standing up and stretching, trying not to moan as her limbs object the movement, a painful prickling sensation shooting up and down her extremities. “Discomfort is an understatement.”

“Oh, you know what I mean.”

She does. She spends a moment taking stock – her muscles burn, her head hurts, her voice rasps, and her throat still aches fiercely, but she doesn’t feel any pain in her belly, no sharp stabbing sensation, no wet drip of blood or throbbing loss. Everything’s surface. “I think I’m fine,” she says slowly, then regroups and focuses on her rescuers. “Well? Why are we standing around? Let’s go. And give me some kind of weapon, Musketeer.”

It’s a quick check – she waits for the moment of doubt, of suspicion. Sure, they found her tied to a chair, but they must know that playing helpless is a frequent gambit of hers, and Athos just recently walked into an ambush thanks to her. But it doesn’t come. Porthos hands her a pistol with barely a flicker of concern, and says, “Think we got ‘em all.”

He proves to be right. There are unconscious Red Guards all about the place, and she efficiently searches one of them to steal his food and water, daring Aramis with her eyes to make any kind of comment about eating or drinking for two. She doesn’t make them wait for her to eat, though, simply shoving the gun into her belt and tearing at the bread as they go, relying on them to deal with any surprises for the moment. She long ago decided their skill at combat was the only useful trait most Musketeers possess, so she may as well make use of that.

“Why are you here?” she asks again, swallowing a bite, but then she amends the question, because she doesn’t like repeating herself and she certainly doesn’t like appearing baffled or surprised. “Aren’t you supposed to be tracking down evidence against Rochefort?”

“Athos took us off that once he realised you’d been taken,” Porthos says, casually opening the door that leads to the ground floor and taking up point position with his sword out. Aramis, a better shot but worse close-up fighter, gestures for Milady take the middle position as he takes the rear, musket raised cautiously. “Told us to have a look around for you instead. And he is technically our boss, now, for all he keeps forgetting that.”

“How did he realise Rochefort had me?” None of this makes any sense. Or – are they trying to play her? She once pretended to trust d’Artagnan completely in order to manipulate them, and perhaps they’re doing the same to her. It’s pointless if they are, since she hasn’t betrayed them, but she’s ridiculously confused by their current attitude. They should think she tried to kill Athos again. Why don’t they seem to think that?

“Didn’t really say,” Aramis says with an expressive shrug. “The Red Guards tried to jump him as well, though, so I suppose when he couldn’t find you…”

“Is he… all right?” She’s floundering, but she won’t let them see it. Confusion is a weakness she can rarely afford to show. She needs to be in charge of her emotions. The Red Guards jumped him, he’d told them, but from the sound of it he didn’t tell them that he was wandering alone in a dead-end street by her request at the time, a request verified to be from her by a piece of jewellery with a meaning so complex no one else could comprehend it. Is Athos trying to protect her? From his own friends’ judgement? She feels mingled exasperation, amusement, and a strange warmth through her at the thought.

“Took a bit of damage, but Aramis sewed ‘im up,” Porthos says casually, lowering his weapon as they reach the crowded main street and become relatively-innocent civilians again. He does still keep checking around for danger, though. “He’s at the palace with Treville now, waiting to talk to the King, doing his captaincy thing. Would’ve come himself for this, but I pointed out he’s no use in this condition.” He adopts a slightly more refined accent and a bit of a drawl for the last few words, seemingly mimicking Athos’s way of speaking.

“We don’t have _quite_ enough to see Rochefort broken on the wheel -”

“He’s a nob, they get the block,” Porthos points out. 

“Right, or that,” Aramis agrees. “But certainly enough to have him detained while we go get more.”

The back of her neck prickles. “So Athos and Treville are at the palace,” she says, like she’s just summing up, voice flat. “Surrounded by Red Guards. With Rochefort probably there as well.”

“You know, when you say it like that, I like it less,” Aramis says after a moment. “You think he’ll try to have them killed? In the Louvre? How? Not even the Red Guard would attack one of the King’s ministers without a good reason. Well, a few of them might, but not all.”

“How about if that Minister murders the King, is that a good enough reason?” In a panic, there’s no story that won’t be listened to, provided it’s yelled loudly enough. The Louvre is stuffed to the brim with Red Guards, and they’re used to listening to Rochefort, and they hate Treville and the Musketeers. If the situation devolves…

“He’s going after the King? Right now? Is the man mad?”

“Yes, and desperate. Have you been paying attention?” she snaps. They’ve been operating on the assumption Rochefort will continue to work slowly and carefully, but that time’s gone. It’s the time for rash, desperate, and violent action, and the Louvre is the last place Athos should be right now.

Porthos pulls out his sword again, seemingly just for comfort, earning worried gazes and a wide berth from the people they pass by. “Rochefort’s the King’s closest confidante, he’s likely to be invited in to speak to him before Treville, or at least at the same time. If he has Red Guards he trusts to keep quiet he could just stab His Majesty whenever and start screaming Treville’s the one who did it -”

Nine out of ten times, it wouldn’t work. But the Louvre must be in chaos today already, thanks to the arrival of the little Dauphin, and the death of His Majesty would turn all that excessive celebration to utter panic in a moment. In utter panic, a man with a large force of guards and a confident manner has the power to do whatever he likes.

“Then let’s go,” Milady snaps. “Quickly. We turn up, make sure Athos is safe -” She remembers that while this is her priority, the two of them have other ones they consider equally as important, and smoothly continues, “And Treville as well, of course. Then we stop Rochefort’s attempt on His Majesty, arrest him, in the act if possible, and the whole thing’s over with. I can get us into His Majesty’s private apartments easily through the passages I know, so long as you can stop us getting killed once we’re there.”

She waits for one of them to point out that the last time a Musketeer snuck into the Louvre with her it was an elaborate trap, waits for their hesitation and suspicion. However, once again, suspicion never comes, only hesitation. They’re not like d’Artagnan, who bristles with hatred and distrust around her – they’re used to following Athos’s lead when it comes to things like this, and apparently he’s told them that this time she is to be trusted, although she has no clue why. They might not like her, but they’ll work with her.

“Should you really be doing this?” Aramis says delicately. “I mean, in your condition -”

“I’m pregnant, not paralysed, Musketeer.” Her child will have a father, even if it lives its whole life on the other side of the English Channel to him. Widowhood is a story she’s told often, but not a fiction she wants to make truth, not anymore. “So the only relevant condition I’m in right now is ‘extremely annoyed’.”

“Oh, Athos is gonna kill us,” Porthos says under his breath. 

Milady ignores him. She’s becoming practiced at ignoring Musketeers. “D’you have a spare sword as well? The Red Guard ones are rubbish.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I loved writing this. Seriously, it was so much fun. I'm going to miss this story. I hope you all liked it too!

Athos twists a little, trying to ease the ache in his shoulder, but it’s useless. Not even Aramis can make a musket wound painless. It seems that every time his wife returns, he receives shocking news, an item of jewellery, a bullet wound, and her knife in his back in some new and unexpected way. It’s not a pattern he particularly enjoys – well, except for the part where she returns.

He’s trying not to think that he just sent off two of his brothers into a situation without briefing them on it fully, because if he does, he won’t be able to keep waiting around in this airless antechamber with Treville for another minute. If history’s any indication, he may have done exactly what Anne expected him to, in which case Aramis and Porthos could be in real danger. In fact, he’s sure that’s what the others would have told him if he’d admitted Milady had double-crossed them yet again - _it’s too dangerous to go and look for her, Athos, she’ll be expecting that. She’ll have planned for it. We need to focus on Rochefort now._ And so he hadn’t told them, because he needs to find her, and he needs to speak to her, and he needs to know.

He has no idea what her motivation was – oh, he can see her reasoning for wanting him dead, he’s done enough to her in the past that it was something of a surprise when she claimed to be done with revenge. But the Red Guards hadn’t been trying to kill him, in fact the only reason he ended up shot was thanks to one of them panicking when faced with his sword, and there weren’t enough of them to capture him easily. Apart from his brothers, no one has as good an idea of his skills as Milady does, and she must have known the ambush unlikely to succeed. So a feint, then, but why? Her strange idea of a parting gift? To distract their attention from Rochefort? But that makes no sense, when she was the one who set them on him in the first place.

Can they trust the information she gave them? He and d’Artagnan’s quick and miraculously unnoticed search of Rochefort’s offices last night turned up a few coded letters, none of which proved anything by themselves, but which could be seen to corroborate the accusations. The other Musketeers have spent the day looking for people from the Spanish spy-nest willing to testify they’ve seen Rochefort there, and have already located another letter in his handwriting, which will help further. He can claim framing and forgery, but with what they have, the King will probably still want him held while they look into it further – His Majesty’s paranoia is a double-edged sword, and it will cut Rochefort just as easily as it’s cut the Musketeers over the past few months. But now Athos is paranoid as well, because his wife gave them that information, and if the reason wasn’t to help them it undoubtedly was to hurt them, and was it perhaps a little too easy to find these letters? A little too simple? Are they about to be disgraced yet again, this time for charging the King’s most trusted advisor with crimes he can disprove in moments? Perhaps when they accuse him Rochefort will immediately pull out faked proof of their attempts to frame him, and Treville will end up in the Bastille again, the rest of them in the Chatelet.

But on the other hand, since the last time Milady de Winter tried to ruin his life, she’s helped him a couple of times, at least once at great personal cost. She stemmed his bleeding and saved his life, she casually reeled off the plan he needed to fix everything, she gave him blackmail material on the Cardinal, and she – well, she told him she loved him, once upon a time. Whenever he thinks it, his mind stutters over the thought: _only person in the world I’ve ever loved_. Why do all that, say all that, and then repeat her earlier actions and betray him again?

Her actions make no sense, but that’s a constant, and so he needs to see her and find out what’s happened and why. The locket is heavy around his neck, and he can’t decide if it’s exactly a comfort anymore, but the weight of it is a part of him. If Porthos and Aramis end up walking into an ambush, or getting knifed by what they thought was a helpless captive, or whatever other inventive cruelty she might have come up with, then he’ll carry that weight forever as well. At the very least he should be warning Treville that they are probably the victims of his wife’s scheming yet again. But he can’t entirely rid his mind of the hope there’s a good explanation for the ambush, and he knew the only way Treville and the others would have agreed to prioritise finding her over gathering more proof is if they were still reasonably confident she was really helping them and therefore really in danger due to that. Athos cannot remember the last time he was so selfish.

“Stop pacing,” Treville tells him, although from the way he’s standing, he looks like he’d rather be pacing as well. He’s noticeably tense. “I’m sure His Majesty will see us soon.”

“I should have gone with Porthos and Aramis,” Athos says, even though he can barely move his sword arm at present and might have been a significant liability in a fight. At least he would have had a better idea than them what they’re likely to be walking into. He could have sent d’Artagnan with them as well, he supposes, but it’s not like he’s filled d’Artagnan in on the situation either, and they need someone who knows what’s going on at the Garrison just in case, watching over the men as they continue to investigate the spy-nest. After all, he knows what they’re looking for. If there’s incontrovertible proof of Rochefort’s treachery, d’Artagnan will bring it over the second the Musketeers find it. They need him there.

“Stop fussing as well.” Treville looks like he wants to roll his eyes, but restrains himself. “You’re captain of the Musketeers, and all the proof has been found by your men. You need to be here to add legitimacy to the accusation. I’ve advised His Majesty that Rochefort may not be trustworthy often enough that without anyone corroborating, it’ll look like game-playing.”

At that, Athos has to suppress an eye-roll as well. Treville is fooling himself if he thinks His Majesty doesn’t still consider the Musketeers to be Treville’s men – Treville’s credibility is inextricably interwoven with theirs, and always will be. But he’s probably right that as someone who has not been visibly involved in their little power struggles, and as a professional soldier with no interest in politics, Athos may be viewed as more neutral and objective by the King. Whether His Majesty particularly respects neutrality or objectivity is another issue.

The wait is so prolonged that even Treville looks like he’s starting to get annoyed by the time Athos cracks.

“This is ridiculous,” Athos says finally. “We need to find out what the hold-up is.” An hour ago, Treville would have pointed out that the King has a newborn son and probably hundreds of people lined up waiting to congratulate him in person, including all the ministers who don’t normally come to Paris, but now he just nods grimly. The wait has long since passed from disrespectful into outright concerning. The antechamber is only down the hall from the King’s private chambers, so they’d assumed being shown there meant they were only moments from being ushered in to see him – it seems they were mistaken.

When Athos swings the door open with his good arm, there’s a Red Guard captain with six of his men there, half standing at attention against each side of the corridor, and it looks like they’ve been standing there for some time.

“You’re to stay here,” the Captain informs them. “Orders.”

“I’m a minister,” Treville snaps, “And I demand to be brought to the King immediately. I’m overruling your orders.”

“My orders come from the King,” the man says, not a single muscle changing in his expression.

“ _Straight_ from the King?”

“Of course not. Passed along through our commanding officer, the Comte de Rochefort.”

Athos and Treville exchange glances. Treville’s a minister, now, and doesn’t carry a weapon, especially not into the Louvre, and Athos’s dominant hand is completely useless at present. Still, Athos considers their options – get the man’s gun off him, shoot him, take his sword, see to the others –

No, they can’t kill the Red Guards, even if they may be physically capable of it: not with so many more within call, and not in the heart of the Louvre, within the King’s apartments. Knocking them out would be one thing, but with their current disadvantage, they couldn’t manage to do so without serious risk, and killing the King’s guards within his apartments will not help them when it comes to accusing Rochefort. Better not to start a fight where even if they win, they lose.

“What does he hope to gain by this?” Treville says in an undertone to Athos, shutting the door again. “Quite a few servants went to tell the King of my presence. Rochefort can’t keep me from him indefinitely. Perhaps he’s trying to provoke us. Or is he just buying time?”

“Probably,” Athos growls. “But time for what?”

X_X_X_X_X

It’s another half hour before the door swing open again, and this time, it’s not the Red Guards on the other side: it’s Porthos. His face splits into a large grin as he sees them, and he calls out over his shoulder, “Found ‘em!”

“Thank God,” Aramis says, popping up beside him, sword in one hand and musket in the other. “Do you know how hard it was to get in here? Seems the Red Guards have orders to stop us entering the palace by any means at their disposal.” He nudges one of the unconscious men on the floor with his foot by way of explanation. “I’m happy to report they fulfilled their instructions to the letter, but I don’t think their means are especially effective.”

“How many Red Guards have you knocked out?” Treville asks, looking mildly appalled. “You can’t mount an assault on the Louvre -”

“Actually, we can.” Milady de Winter steps into the room, sidling past his friends, hair a mess, hood shoved back, and pistol cocked and raised. She gives them a cool smile, eyes glittering. “The security here is very lax, you know. Has anyone ever actually _failed_ at breaking into the palace?”

“Why are you here?” Athos asks, voice harsh, heart beating too quickly as he looks at her. His hands clench into fists, and he can’t tell if he’s resisting the urge to reach out and pull her into an embrace, or shake her and ask her what the hell she’s playing at. He can feel the locket inside his shirt, warm against his breastbone, and it seems almost to throb like a second heart.

“Paying a debt.” She shrugs, leaning the barrel of the gun against her shoulder so it points at the ceiling, the picture of insouciance. But there’s the barest hesitation in the sidelong look she gives him. “You and your idiot friends rescued me from Rochefort, so I’m returning the favour. Nothing more.”

Athos can’t stop staring. Her eyes have dark shadows under them, there’s visible rope burn on her wrist where the cloak has fallen down as she raises her arm, and there’s a ring of bruises around her uncovered neck that fills him with wordless rage. “Rochefort had you?” he asks, rather stupidly, he knows. Part of his mind revolts against the idea, reminding him that she’s done this before – pretended to be helpless and in need of aid, just to provoke the response she wants. But another part sees only the signs of capture obvious on her face and body, and he wants so badly just to believe her. 

“Yes,” she says, giving him an unreadable look. “He did.”

“While I appreciate the intent, what are all of you doing here?” Treville intervenes, looking at the others, face set. 

“Saving you,” Porthos says cheerfully. “You’re welcome. Seemed a bit like you were being held here against your will.”

“They had orders to keep us in this chamber, but I can’t imagine why,” Treville says with a scowl. “Rochefort must know he can’t stop me from seeing the King forever.”

“Well, no, but I assume meeting him again in Heaven is not really part of the plan,” Milady drawls. She makes a dismissive gesture. “Of course, Musketeer plans…” 

Treville’s expression sharpens. “Was that supposed to suggest Rochefort’s planning to kill us, or His Majesty?”

“We think both.” Aramis retrieves a gun and sword from the nearest unconscious Red Guard and passes them to Treville. Instead of passing the others to Athos, he simply straps them onto him, aware that in his current condition Athos can’t comfortably or easily do anything requiring two hands. It’s difficult enough to reload muskets with two hands, so the gun will definitely be one shot only, but he’s good-enough with swords in his off hand to be a match for the Red Guards, hopefully. “But we’ll stop it. Milady says she can get us in to see the King without getting caught or stopped, now we’ve taken out this lot.”

Before Aramis can pull back, Athos fists the hand of his good arm in the front of the other man’s shirt, yanking him so they’re face to face and Aramis can’t mistake his fury. “You brought my _pregnant wife_ on a mission to break into the palace, attack an army of Red Guards, and stop a madman from assassinating the King?!”

“Told you,” Porthos says under his breath.

“Your… wait, is it _yours_?” Aramis’s eyes widen and he looks from Milady to Athos. A disbelieving smile plays across his mouth for a moment, but then dies, replaced by worry and confusion.

“Not the brains of the operation, are you, Musketeer?” Milady grabs another gun as well, seemingly because it’s easier than reloading, and stows it somewhere in the cloak. Judging by the metallic noises, she has more than a few weapons stocked already.

“I like to think of myself as the beauty,” Aramis says with dignity, though he still looks slightly poleaxed by the news. “Porthos is brawn, of course.”

“Nah. I’m all three.”

“I think this discussion can wait,” Treville says grimly. “I can appreciate your reservations about this, Athos, but the King’s safety is the priority. Lead the way, Milady.”

X_X_X_X_X

It’s while the uninjured members of the party are scouting quickly ahead that he manages to grab her sleeve and get her attention. “You shouldn’t be here,” Athos says under his breath. “We can handle it.” They don’t need to take the backways she knows to get to the King’s chambers – they can take the main halls and deal with the guards as they find them. It might be louder and more dangerous, but they can do it.

“Who knows how many Red Guards are in on Rochefort’s plan? You need as much help as you can get. And it’s my life to risk.”

Rochefort has hired quite a few new Guards in his brief time in command, and it makes sense that they’d be ones willing to overlook any duty to King or country in return for coin, but that just means it’s even more imperative that she get out of here soon. If Rochefort succeeds and successfully pins the blame on Treville, then all the rest of them will die and the Queen will become a puppet regent to her brother and Rochefort. But even in that dangerous Spanish-ruled France, with a vengeful First Minister out for her blood, he has no doubt she can survive if given a head start. She managed to evade Richelieu, after all. Her chances will certainly be better than if she throws herself into this stupidity, anyway.

He wonders if she’s trying to make up for having been a part of Rochefort’s plot in the first place, or having knowingly sent him into an ambush, or even just for all the murders she’s committed in the six years since he hung her from a tree. He wonders if she’s here to try and keep him from dying. He wonders how she could ever think putting herself in danger is the right way to do _any_ of those things. He needs her to be _safe_.

“But it’s not _only_ your life, not anymore,” he says in a low voice, seizing on an inarguable point.

Her eyes flash, and she opens her mouth, doubtless to excoriate him for acting like her having his child gives him any right to dictate her actions, but before she can say anything she doubles over, all the air huffing out of her lungs in shock, hand coming up to grasp her stomach.

“Anne?” His eyes widen and he reaches for her to steady her, already half-turning to call for Aramis in a panic, but then she raises her head again and he sees she’s smiling.

“No, it’s -” She shakes her head, still smiling, eyes shining, but she doesn’t seem to have the words to explain. Instead she grasps one of his hands and drags it into the cloak to rest on her stomach.

It takes him a moment, but then he feels it even through the bodice, and nearly gapes at her. “Is that… is it… what is…”

“It’s kicking,” she says simply. There are tears in her eyes, and her smile has widened into a true grin, and she looks so joyful he almost can’t stand it. He swallows hard and doesn’t know how to respond, not to the movement of the small being inside her against his palm, not to the warmth and closeness of her, not to the naked happiness and love in her face that he hasn’t seen in six years. The naked happiness and love he spent so long telling himself was just another mask – a convincing one, but nothing more than that – and he looks at her now and wonders how he ever believed that for a moment.

He opens his mouth to say something, but doesn’t know what, then closes it again and just shakes his head in awe. There is a child inside her, half him and half her, and for the first time that truly seems real to him – that it will be a _child_ , held in her arms, toddling after her gripping her skirts, grasping her hand with its own, laughing and talking and growing and _real_. It is more terrifying and amazing than anything he could have imagined, not just because it is his child, not even because it is hers, but because it’s put that impossible expression of joy on the face of the person he loves more than all the rest of the world. A child is something precious, but her happiness is something miraculous.

_This_ , something in the back of his head says, _this is everything you want_ , and any small remaining suspicion in his mind that she’s lying or playing them evaporates completely. There’s something too raw about this moment to doubt. For just a few seconds, everything is fixed and he is whole, _they_ are whole, and he leans forward and kisses her forehead in a gesture that contains as much worship as love.

After a long moment, she clears her throat, and says huskily, “I’ll stay to the back, behind you and the others.”

“Good,” he manages, accepting this as the compromise it is. “We make excellent cover, and we’re quite accustomed to being shot.” 

“Yes, I hear.” She presses her lips to his wounded shoulder so gently that the warmth of it contains no burn of pain at all, and just as he recognised her earlier concession as a compromise, he recognises this as a kind of apology. “He was going to interrogate and kill me, and he planned an ambush to kill you as well, and I thought if I played along I could lessen the risk. It was the best option I had.”

“But the locket…”

“His idea, not mine, I assure you.” 

He reaches up and takes off the locket, and she dips her head to allow him to place it around her neck instead. He wants it back, even now as he puts it on her, but he returns it anyway because he doesn’t want it as anything except a gift from her. He suspects, with an echoing pain accompanying the thought, that she’ll leave it with him when she goes to England – Milady loves symbols, and uses them against him ruthlessly. Hearts, lockets, flowers: _love me, hold me close, do not forget me_. But then, he’s always liked symbols as well. He finds them easier than words. Even back when he could admit he loved her, he never managed to find the words to express the extent of it – symbolic gifts and demonstrations were much easier. 

Quickly, before the others reappear, he gives her the easiest demonstration of all – his lips over hers, a small, quiet kiss which feels as if it leaves an imprint on him like a burn.

X_X_X_X_X

She keeps her promise when they reach His Majesty’s largest private room, letting the rest of them charge forward while she lingers in the hallway, and he gives her a grateful glance.

“Porthos, the door,” he says to his friend in an undertone, and Porthos nods in understanding. The two of them slam open each side of the double doors, allowing Aramis and Treville to storm into the room first, pistols raised and ready. He and Porthos step to the sides, covering the rest of the room with theirs – there are well over a dozen Red Guards present, placed regularly around the room. Most of them Athos recognises as recent commissions.

The King’s joyful expression falters, and he lowers the celebratory drink he’s holding, surveying them with confusion. “Treville? What is the meaning of this?”

Rochefort’s next to the King, his face twisting to fury and something like panic. “Isn’t it obvious, Your Majesty -” he begins to say smoothly, no doubt about to peddle some damaging lie of a treasonous Treville, but they don’t give him the chance.

“Enough,” Treville says in a parade-ground bark, the noise of him readying his gun audible in the quiet, and Athos sees Rochefort swallow hard as he eyes the weapon. “Your Majesty, step away. The Comte de Rochefort is an agent of Spain.”

The King laughs. “Treville, that’s absurd.”

“We have proof.” Athos says it, because while he’s hardly an accomplished liar, he’s better than Treville.

If Rochefort knew they had nothing but circumstantial evidence and slightly suspicious letters, he could claim insult at the wrongful accusation, challenge them to produce their proof, and ultimately escape consequences. Perhaps the disproved accusation would even strengthen Louis’s confidence in him. Athos can almost see him consider that possibility. But he doesn’t know for sure they don’t have proof, and if he takes that path and is incorrect, he loses any chance of surviving this, let alone triumphing from it.

“Kill them,” he snaps instead. “Guards, to me.”

The noise of the muskets in this enclosed space are deafening, the clash of metal on metal as swords meet almost more so – Athos spends his shot immediately and simply drops the gun, already moving forward to engage the next closest Red Guards. He, Aramis, and Porthos have fought side by side every day for half a decade, and they instinctively know where each other are and what they will do, making space where necessary, ducking out of the way of their allies’ shots, distracting or maiming enemies just as they’re about to go for another member. Substituting Treville for d’Artagnan barely slows that, since it’s not the first time they’ve fought with him either. The mood they’re in, a dozen Red Guards are an inconvenience more than a threat. Aramis takes a glancing blow from a sword, and the pain of Athos’s wound flares up agonisingly as a Red Guard locks their blades and pushes with all his strength, but neither act prevents their enemies’ defeat. They cut through them like a knife through butter.

“Weapons down, all of you,” Rochefort says, clear, cultured voice carrying even above the noise of the fight, and he has his sword at His Majesty’s throat. Louis is pale, but doesn’t struggle against Rochefort’s grip, looking like he’s in shock.

There’s a moment of general hesitation, and then Rochefort presses the blade back lightly, opening up a livid red line on the terrified King’s throat, and swords and muskets hit the ground quickly. There’s the possibility Rochefort will kill the King anyway to try and continue with his plan, but with no back-up and the four of them able to rearm in moments, it would be extremely foolish to remove his only leverage. He’d be dead in seconds. No, he’ll keep the King alive for the time being, but what will he do next?

“You,” Rochefort says smoothly, pale lips curling back into something like a snarl, “Will all let me leave. And if I’m feeling _very_ generous -”

There’s a sharp noise, metallic and organic at the same time, and he breaks off with a slight, shocked grunt, gasping for a breath that doesn’t come. A black-gloved hand shoves him forward as the sword falls out of his now-limp hand and he slumps to the floor, dead, Louis already scrambling away from the blade. Milady, visible now Rochefort’s fallen, looks down at him with no emotion in her face except slight satisfaction, her sword buried deep in his back. An open piece of panelling behind her shows where she came from.

“Y’know, she has a point about the security of this place,” Porthos notes in an undertone.

His Majesty turns to look at her, stunned. “Did you – did he – what just –” He returns his attention to his minister. “Treville, I’m going to need a full explanation of what just happened. You and your men barging in here like that – surely you could have brought this up at a better – Dear God.” He subsides, stopping his stammering and stuttering, and taking a few deep breaths as he tries to recover. He raises one hand to the seeping red line at his neck, staining his white gloves.

Athos is across the room and grabbing Milady before he can think twice about it, grateful and furious at the same time. “I told you to stay back,” he hisses at her, taking her shoulders in his hands and holding her at arm’s length, looking up and down her to check for injury, even though holding her like that exacerbates his own wound. She rolls her eyes at him eloquently.

“Good God,” Louis says faintly from beside them, eyeing the hidden door with concern. “Has that always been there? Most unsafe.” 

“I believe your royal father intended it as an escape passage, your majesty.” Milady disengages herself from Athos gently, moving to face the King. In her large cloak, eyes wide and dark hair tousled, she looks small and almost defenceless despite her violent act, and Athos is very sure she knows that. She lowers her head and curtseys in an act of reverence, then raises adoring green eyes to the King’s face, a slight flush building on her cheeks as if it’s awe-inspiring even to look at him. “I apologise for using it otherwise -”

“But who are you? What are you even _doing_ here?”

“I came in with your loyal Musketeers, your majesty,” she says, still looking misleadingly innocent, the bruises around her throat only adding to the appearance of a helpless, abused woman – one who also happens to be extremely beautiful, and everyone knows Louis has a weak spot for beautiful women. “I am known as Milady de Winter. I’m the one who reported Rochefort, once I realised the extent of his vile machinations. I didn’t intend to join the fight – violence is horrifying to me, distressing – but when I saw your majesty was in peril from that madman, I had to act, however terrifying it was.”

“Violence is what now?” Aramis asks, looking amused, but she ignores him, still focused on the King.

The King seems almost hypnotised by her as she goes fully to her knees, taking his hands in supplication, eyes still raised worshipfully to his. “I only hope your majesty can forgive me for the things I’ve done in my attempt to stop that monster from harming the greatest King France has ever known. I know it was a crime to break into the palace, and to raise a weapon against a minister, and my only excuse is that desperation drove me to -”

“You saved my life,” Louis interrupts fervently, not proof against her tearful yet worshipful gaze and the soulful tone to her voice. Athos watches, not sure if he’s impressed or seriously annoyed, as His Majesty presses her hands between his own, attempting to comfort her. Louis is distracted from his own distress by her being so visibly overset, and her adoration lets him step into the role of the wise, good king again, which is always the way Louis prefers to view himself, instead of feeling like the helpless hostage he was only minutes ago. “Milady, was it? All your crimes are hereby pardoned, in light of your great service to me.”

“Well played,” Porthos murmurs, just loudly enough for Athos to hear and give him a look, as Milady babbles her ecstatic appreciation, bringing Louis’s hands to her lips in devotion and gratitude.

She backs away from the King before Louis can begin to be annoyed by the veneration, letting Treville step forward with an irritated glance at her and start beginning to explain what’s going on, and she moves to stand beside Athos again. “Easily persuaded by pretty women, isn’t he?” she murmurs to him, with a little bit of smugness. “I think I timed that rather well.”

“It could have gone either way,” he mutters to her, because the King is nothing if not inconsistent, especially when he’s afraid or angry. “You can’t have believed we were going to arrest you, regardless.”

“No, but now no one else can arrest me, either. It’s a good start to – well, a new start.” She lets out a sigh that seems to shake her whole body, eyes sliding half-closed. “My God, I need sleep. And a change of clothes. And a drink, but I suppose that will have to wait a while.”

“Come on, then.” Athos stows his sword and puts his good arm around her, purely to help support her. He doesn’t know much about pregnancy, but he doubts any of what she’s been doing lately is recommended for expectant women. Yelling at her for her recklessness should probably wait until she looks less exhausted.

They don’t bother to use any secret passageways as they leave, not this time. They walk directly out the front doors of the palace, covered in blood and visibly injured, and no one makes any attempt to stop them.

X_X_X_X_X

He takes her to the Garrison, purely because it’s closer, and looks away as she strips, pulls on a discarded shirt of his, and crawls tiredly into his bed to rest. Once she’s fast asleep, though, he can’t suppress his desire to stare at her, trying to gauge how healthy she is, how strong. She still has a glow to her, but it’s muted, and the soot-like marks of new violence at her already-scarred throat make him wish he could revive Rochefort purely to kill him again.

Eventually, though, he moves away and finds a bottle of wine, sitting with it in the next room and trying to process everything. For once, he drinks slowly. The sun sinks and the room darkens, but he doesn’t light a candle, finding the light of the moon through the window sufficient for his current needs. It’s probably a couple of hours later that slender fingers wrap around the neck of the bottle and pull it away. She takes only a sip before placing the bottle back on the desk and leaning herself against him, and he sighs, all of the tension going from his body at her touch.

“When the note I sent led you to Rochefort’s men, did you think I’d betrayed you?” she asks quietly.

He hesitates, but admits it, toying with the bottle in his fingers as he does so. “Yes. I did. Or at least I wondered. It didn’t seem – entirely impossible. Or even entirely improbable, given everything that’s happened between us.”

Even in the dark, he can see her blink too hard several times out of the corner of his eye, but then she blows out a breath in apparent resignation, and he feels the air against his neck. “No. I suppose not. But… you told the others Rochefort had me. You didn’t tell them I’d betrayed you, that I might be working for him. Why?”

“Well,” he says, and he takes another drink, and he clears his throat. “I didn’t know. I needed to ask you, needed to find out if it was true.”

“Ah. You didn’t want to condemn me without a trial,” she murmurs, so quietly that he almost doesn’t hear it. 

The last word shocks him. He hadn’t thought of it like that, had only thought how very weak he was for wanting to live in denial, but she’s right. He jerks his head around to stare at her. Six years ago, _a_ year ago, he would have assumed her guilt, and never bothered to ask anything. It’s shocking to think they’ve come far enough that he no longer falls straight to imagining the worst of her, but it’s more than that. Not only had he wanted to make sure, waited to speak with her and hear her side before he condemned her, but even in the first minutes after the ambush when he’d believed implicitly in her treachery, he hadn’t been roused to violence by that belief, hadn’t seriously thought for as much as a moment of actively hurting her. It wasn’t that the child inside her made him hold back from ideas of arrest or execution, because at first he hadn’t thought of the child at all, it was just that those ideas were dismissed almost as they formed. Maybe some core-deep part of him remembered that causing her pain had never dulled his own, or recalled the destruction that his rage wrought five years ago, or knew that in some way he would really just be attacking himself. Whatever the reason, even in that first, shockingly intense flare of anger and betrayal, he hadn’t wanted to lash out, hadn’t planned to hurt her as she hurt him.

He’d thought he would never trust her again, but apparently, trust can be rebuilt, can grow again even between people like them – he’s capable of not assuming the worst of her, now. He’d also thought he couldn’t control himself if she hurt him again, but apparently he knows how to pause, now, how to question, how to keep himself from the fury-driven recklessness that destroyed them before.

And… she’s the same, isn’t she? She trusted him enough to come to him, to tell him everything, to believe that he would let her leave and have the life she wants, instead of forcing her to stay or trying to keep her child from her. She’s also _willing_ to leave, if it’s what’s best, instead of pursuing something she thinks might lead to pain and hurt and more damage, even though he can tell she wants to. For all her talk of lacking self-control around each other, she’s shown plenty of it. She was even cool-headed enough to decide that they were too toxic together to raise a child, to remove herself and it from the extremes of emotion they cause in each other.

But maybe the conclusion she came to was wrong, despite all the cool calculation that went into it. He’s almost amazed by the thought – that maybe the two of them really could raise a child with each other and never be at risk of tearing each other or it to shreds. Maybe they’ve learnt and changed. Maybe they could be better than they used to be. Maybe they truly could fix things between them, as impossible as it seems.

She’s watching him, reading his mind as always. “You still don’t trust me. Not really.”

“No.” He can see her flinch at it. “But I want to.”

She hesitates, but eventually says, voice low. “I want to trust you, as well. But I don’t think wishing will make it happen.”

“Time will,” he says, “Time and work and trying… that’s all I’m asking for.”

There’s a long pause, and then she says softly, “I’ll think about it.”

He wonders if that’s the first lie she’s told him since she returned to Paris, or just the first he’s noticed. Perhaps she sees his doubt and misery in his face, even in darkness, because she settles herself sideways in his lap and lays her head against his chest. He wraps his arms around her and presses a kiss to the top of her hair, then lets one open hand come to rest on the curve of the child, feeling it move again beneath his shirt and her skin. Something’s blocking his throat and making his eyes tear up, so he closes them, and breathes in the scent of her, and feels the reassuring weight of her against him, and lets the moment be all that matters.

“It won’t stop kicking, now,” she tells him, pretending annoyance, but he can hear the pride and exuberance in her tone. “It woke me up and everything. Aggressive little thing.”

“I wonder where it gets that from.” The kicking has subsided for the moment, and he lets his hand slide to her upper leg instead, where there’s bare skin to touch.

“It’s a mystery,” she agrees gravely, and bites lightly at his collarbone in retaliation.

He tilts her head up with a finger under her chin and kisses her. It always feels like opening a vein and injecting pure molten heat, to touch her, and now she is in his lap, all of her warmth and softness pressed to him, and that’s even better. She kisses him back with every bit as much passion, nipping at his lower lip, her fingers digging convulsively into his shoulders as she rears up to get a better angle, to try and take control of the kiss, mouth slanting down over his. He groans against her mouth and pushes up as she rubs against him, body reacting to her helplessly, and she pulls back to regard him with a raised eyebrow he can barely make out in the darkness.

“Athos. I’m the size of a house.”

“I thought pregnant women disapproved of aspersions like that,” he teases lightly, although truthfully, the pregnancy hasn’t changed her body as much as she seems to think it has, and he would certainly never have described her as a house. It’s a relief to pretend, even for a few minutes, that there’s no heavy weight of history and inevitably between them – they could be any married couple sitting together in the night, with no murders or betrayals or abandonment to distract them from their happiness. Just a couple, with a room, and a bed, and a bright future that does not include England in any way.

She shifts again and looks down at him, still arching her body like a cat to press as much of herself against him as possible, and he can feel her tremble as he licks a line up her neck to just below her ear, a whine just barely catching in her bruised throat. Still, she manages to say, “Nevertheless, that doesn’t make them less true.”

He doesn’t know much about expectant mothers, but he knows her and he knows her body and reactions, however altered the shape of her might be right now, so he raises an eyebrow at her in return, trusting her to catch it in his tone if not his expression. “Are you saying the prospect is unwelcome?” He slides his hands further up her bare legs, bringing them to rest at her hips, and she catches her breath.

“Merely that I thought it might be unwelcome to you.”

“Never,” he says in a low voice, and then nothing more for quite some time.

X_X_X_X_X

Athos wakes with an unfamiliar feeling of happiness, but it doesn’t last through sitting up and realising that there’s no one there beside him. He has a vague memory of drifting off to sleep with her glued to his side, but now, there’s only an empty space, and he feels cold at the loss. Worse, there’s a weight around his neck, and he looks down with a sinking feeling to realise that she’s returned her locket to him once more. Slowly, as if checking, he opens it and looks inside at the forget-me-nots, every tiny stem and petal memorised through years of staring at them every morning and every night.

The flowers are dried, and so cannot wilt, but also cannot grow or change. Apparently, neither can they, however much he wishes for it.

He placed the choker on the table next to the bed last night when they undressed each other, and he is not surprised now to find it gone. Still, it’s an ache worse than his wound, to realise that she is.

Athos tells himself it’s for the best, fighting against the sour taste in his mouth and the pain in his heart. Their relationship is complex and confronting, the past will always weight them down like an anchor, and he’s not fit to be a father. Also, if the past few days have demonstrated anything, it’s that while she’s in Paris, Milady will never be able to entirely divorce herself from a life of danger, conspiracies and intrigue, child or no child.

“What’re you brooding about now?”

The sound of her voice jolts him, and he looks incredulously over at the door to find her standing there, half-leaning against the frame, sipping a mug of something hot and wearing nothing beside his shirt and the choker with its heart-shaped pendant. “You,” he says, as if it’s obvious. “I thought you left already.” He holds up the locket as if in question.

“You said you missed it,” she says reasonably, as if there’s no additional meaning to the gesture than that. “I woke up early. Your bed is quite uncomfortable, you know.”

“I’ve never noticed.” He fights the urge to pull her back down onto the bed again anyway, as if he could make her stay with that alone, use the passion that rises so easily as a lure to ensnare her. If she is here, with him, pressed against his body, she cannot be in a coach on her way to Le Havre, she cannot be in England, she cannot be gone. Seducing Milady de Winter: now _there’s_ an ironic plan.

“Unlike you, I’m not in a position to drink myself into a stupor to achieve unconsciousness.” She hesitates for a moment and then says, voice flippant, “It’s very damp in England.”

“Yes?”

“That’s probably unhealthy for children. Ague, or whatever it’s called. And I couldn’t stand to raise a son with one of those braying voices, or a daughter who gives silly titters every few seconds.” Her lips curls just at the thought. “The English are so… inelegant, in some ways.”

“You’re staying.” The joy of it leaves him breathless, amazed, confused, utterly terrified. “You – I mean, will you -”

She shrugs, still determinedly insouciant, although she’s biting her lip and her eyes are a little anxious. “For now, anyway. The money I have won’t last _quite_ as long in Paris as it would elsewhere, but it’s more than enough for a decent house, a maid, and later a nurse to help care for the babe. In time, perhaps I’ll look for small jobs to help supplement what I have – don’t look at me like that, I don’t mean _that_ kind of work. There are many ways I could help Treville, and I suspect he knows that.”

He doesn’t know what to say to this – a flat negative will be completely ignored, he’s sure, and any attempt to tell her that once she’s a mother she should cease any dangerous activities will only cause her to point out the hypocrisy of that advice, since he has no plans to give up his commission. And the truth is, he can’t picture the woman she is now being satisfied spending all her day in a kitchen, with a child on her hip.

What he can’t figure out is what this means for him. That she’s decided to stay is a good sign, of course it is, but her own house and her own work seems to suggest that his part in her life may be just as her child’s father – which is amazing, of course it is, far more than he could ever have expected. And yet far less than he really wants.

He has no right to be greedy, though, so he swallows his longing and instead says gruffly, “I’ll help out however I can.”

“I know you will.” She steps forwards and cups his face in her hands, kissing him deeply, which alleviates his concerns somewhat, and he falls into it and into her. When she pulls back, they’re both flushed. “And if you ever want to spend the occasional night in a more comfortable bed…”

“Occasional,” he repeats, trying to gauge exactly what she means.

She looks exasperated. “Athos, I love you, but you can be an imbecile. I’m suggesting trying, but… carefully. Slowly. Taking things one step at a time, testing the ground as we go. We can’t afford to rush and get things wrong, not anymore, not when we’re not the only ones likely to be damaged by it.”

That answers his questions, including the one he wouldn’t have dared to ask. He doesn’t know how she can love him, not after everything, but despite the offhand way she says the words, he can see the truth of it shining in her eyes, and it sends him dizzy with joy and hope. He can take things slow, if that’s what she wishes – he’ll wait a thousand years if that’s what it takes to find something of what they’ve lost, to build something that will last, to create a new kind of happiness. He wants her to feel the ground is stable beneath her. He wants her to truly believe he’ll never hurt her again. He wants to believe the same of her in turn. Time, he’d said, time and work and trying, and if she’s willing to give him that, he’s more than willing to return the favour. He’s more than willing to return the sentiment, as well.

“I love you,” he says, and the words are accompanied by a gut-wrenching, painful feeling, as if he’s physically torn them out of his core to fling them at her feet, but strangely they also bring a sense of peace. He’s spent so long fighting against that truth, just as he fought against all the other truths she used as knives to cut at him with, that to admit them is like a loss and a release together. “And we can take this as slowly as you wish.”

He slants his mouth over hers, but gently, tentatively, noses brushing as she angles her head to deepen it, raising trembling fingers to trace the side of her face. After a few achingly soft presses of lips to lips, she sighs against him, hands tangling in his hair, the locket pressed between their bodies, and the little metal heart at her throat shining in the light of the rising sun through the window.

And as Paris wakes around them, a new day beginning, they take things slow.


End file.
